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THE 



COMFORTS 



OF 

human Life i 

OR 

SMILES AND LAUGHTER 

OF 

CHARLES CHEARFUL 
AND MARTIN MERRYFELLOW. 

\ \ '-w — — — — — — „^ 

IN SEVEN DIALOGUES. 

_ _ _ 

SECOND EDITION. 

•,'-t"-y 



Lmtnotu 

PRINTED FOR ODDY AND CO. 
27 , OXFORD STREET, 

BY J. AND W, SMITH, KING STREET, SEVEN DIALS. 

1807. 



■ HsCl 

/2oJ 



I*- 

TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



DIALOGUE THE FIRST. 

PAGE 

Meeting of Mr. Charles Chearful and 
Mr. Martin Merryfellow, with Mr. 
Samuel Sensitive and Mr. Timothy 
Testy — in which a contrast of their 
Characters is exhibited • • • • i 3 

DIALOGUE THE SECOND. 

Comforts of the Countiy S3 

DIALOGUE THE THIRD, 

Comforts of London 55 

DIALOGUE THE FOURTH. 

Comforts of Sports and Games 314 

DIALOGUE THE FIFTH. 

Comforts of Travelling • 13S 

DIALOGUE THE SIXTH. 

Personal Comforts 155 

DIALOGUE THE SEVENTH. 

Comforts of Social Life • • 194 

A 2 



VI ADVERTISEMENT. 

ness, wrinkles, and squalid colours, on a 
face that is to me bewitchingly beautiful, 
has only the misfortune to be frightened 
by ugliness where I am ravished with 
charms. He that is so nice a connoisseur 
in good-eating, as to find, that, of twenty 
dishes, of any one of which I eat with 
appetite, there is none so dressed as to be 
fit to be tasted by an Epicure of his nic£ 
skill, has, by this, only the misluck to 
make a bad dinner, while I, at the same 
table, enjoy a very good one. I heartily 
pity the poor man to whom the pleasure 
of a walk is quite spoiled, if but the 
smallest bit of gravel get into the foot of 
his boot. As many new pleasures as you 
will — if they be but genuine. But, let us 
leave it to the Testys and Sensitives of 
the world — and they are, God knows, a 
mighty number— to refine upon wretch- 
edness — to inflame every scratch with a 
pin to the torture and danger of the breast 



ADVERTISEMENT. Vll 

pierced with a poisoned arrow — to shrink 
from the coming storm before its visible 
approach — to enjoy, like a Highland seer, 
a second sight, that entertains the mind 
with none but visions of death and hor- 
ror! — Ah! to me, ten thousand times 
dearer is the resolution of the vulgar pro- 
verb, <c To LIVE, LOVE, AND LAUGH, ALL 
THE DAYS OF ONE'S LIFE !" 

The reverend Author of the " Miseries 
of Human Life," has evinced, in that 
popular work, a knowledge, admirably ex« 
tensive and correct, of those minute in- 
cidents and circumstances which are, to 
numbers of men, the sources of occasional 
vexation, and which have actually power 
to render some very peevish or very feeble 
minds perpetually miserable. 

One should judge, that he wished rathei 

to make a sport of that host of petty 

vexations, than by mustering them, by 

disciplining them, by drawing them out 

A4 



Vin ADVERTISEMENT. 

in rank and file, by improving the reach 
of their bayonets, and the level of their 
musketry, to render their invasion of hu- 
iftan happiness more formidable and fatal. 

Yet, if the former was his aim ; he has, 
perhaps, to a certain degree, missed it. 
His book is illumined by many flashes of 
wit: and it unfolds, here and there, much 
of the irresistibly ludicrous imagery of 
Hogarthian humour. In the whole, how- 
ever, his enumeration of the " Miseries 
of Human Life," is too much a plain, 
dry catalogue. The vein of irony is not 
sufficiently rich, nor sufficiently conti- 
nuous. Swift, Sterne, or Voltaire, 
would have hitched in — something slyly 
and oddly humorous, into the description 
of every particular Misery in the whole 
List, that should have made the burthen 
and point of the jest to turn against the 
folly of the person who could make a 
Misery to himself of such a circumstance 



ADVERTISEMENT. IX 

or incident, — something that should have 
transformed the nominal Misery into a 
Comfort, in the very moment of its ex- 
hibition. The reverend Author seems to 
be, almost all along, in sober earnest. I 
doubt not but his Catalogue must ha^e 
made many more persons cry than laugh. 
I shrewdly suspect, that even the joys of 
his own existence have not been multiplied 
by his pains-taking and successful hint 
after Miseries. Lemuel Gulliver found 
not even a Brobdignaggian more formida- 
ble than was a multitude of Lilliputians, 
surrounding him with bows not stouter 
than wheat-straws, and arrows not more 
powerful than sweet-briar prickles. And, 
it were not surprizing, — if, much in the 
same manner, persons who bear one or 
two of the greater ills of life, without 
being driven to wrong-headed despon- 
dency, should feel inclined to " make 
their quietus" under the u siege of minute 



X ADVERTISEMENT. 

troubles" which this author brings against 
them — even — " with a bate bodkin!" 

It is for these reasons, that I have at- 
tempted to contrast this detail of Mise- 
ries with an exposition of some of the 
"Comforts of Life/' gay or serious. 
It is said, that John Bull is best pleased 
wth those who tdke the greatest pains to 
convince him that he is Miserable, — that 
he is utterly undone. — Yet, one should 
hope, that a book of Comforts may be not 
unacceptable, as a second course or a des- 
sert after a book of Miseries, The follow- 
ing pages will possibly be found to shew, 
that most of those incidents, from which 
the reverend Author extracts Miseries, 
must, when seen in their due light, and 
w r hen met with the proper spirit, become 
absolutely matter of Comfort. 

It is not denied, that, to him is due, as 
the first author of the general idea, a 
praise which the writer of this view of the 



ADVERTISEMENT. XI 

Comforts of Life has no pretensions to 
claim. 

I have naturally availed myself of the 
Public's previous acquaintance with Mes- 
sieurs Testy and Sensitive. I should be 
fortunate indeed, if my friend Merry- 
fellow and I, who am, after all, but 
amanuensis to the party, might share with 
them, the kindness of such as love occa- 
sionally to meditate, in a lounging pick- 
tooth humour, over the concerns of Hu- 
man Life. 

We detail but a small share of its Com- 
forts. — When the reverend Author shall 
complete, according to his promise, the 
Catalogue of Miseries ; we may then pro- 
bably be induced to enlarge our display of 
Human Joys. 

CHARLES CHEARFUL. 



COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 



Scene — The Park. 



DIALOGUE THE FIRST. 

To Samuel Sensitive and Timothy 
Testy, enter Charles Chearful and 
Martin Merryfellow. 



k 



Merryfellow. 



LA! whom have we here ? Peevish and 
Deplorable, arm in arm ? The very phizzes 
of Unappeasable Discontent and sneaking 
Despondency close together, like those of 
Philip and Mary on a shilling ! Did you 
ever before see two such figures, Chearful! 
That meagre person, that withered brow, 
those ferret eyes, those cheeks shrivelled as 
a bit of parchment, forsaking the paste- 
board on the cover of an old book, that 



J4 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

short peaked nose, that pursed, pouting 
mouth, bespeak a mind that has deformed 
and worn out the frame it animates, by 
incessant toil, to extract from every sub- 
ject of thought, continual matter of dis- 
satisfaction. To what a mixed expression 
of sourness and effected wisdom he twists 
his features ! 

Chearful. But, how rueful the look 
of his companion ! What a sunken eye ! 
What a droop of the chin, What a lifeless 
stoop in the shoulders! With what lan- 
guid, painful effort he drags his legs! He 
starts at that fly alighting on his hand, as 
if its touch were the bite of a scorpion. 
His comrade seems to inthral him with 
the power of an evil genius. He shrinks 
from every grasp of the other, — and shud- 
ders at his every word,— yet still cleaves to 
him. 

Merry. Sure, I have seen that figure be- 
fore. Is it not our old college-companion, 
Samuel Sensitive? 

Chear. Sensitive? — Ha! It is indeed! 
—And the other is, positively, Sensitive's 
constant chum at college, Tim Testy* 



COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. IS 

Merry. Mr. Testy ! Mr. Sensitive ! Old 
friends ! How have you fared these twenty 
years r 

Testy. Very miserably ! Most miser- 
ably ! It seemed that nothing could be so bad 
as the plagues of the life we led at college. 
But, the world is the same, every where : 
a pitfal beset with snares ; a wilderness of 
thorns, briars, thistles, nettles, and prickly 
pear trees, tearing one's flesh in the ten- 
derest parts at every movement one makes, 
however slight; at the best, a bed of down 
bespread with cow-itch between the sheets: 
a — — 

Chear. What afflictions have my old 
friends experienced ? Have you been rob- 
bed of your fortunes i Have you been pre- 
cipitated into unmerited infamy? Have 
your friends proved unfaithful, or your re- 
lations unkind : Have you been disap- 
pointed in love, or cuckolded in marriage ? 
Have your children died by sudden illness? 
Or, have your mortal enemies undeservedly 
risen to wealth and honours, by those very 
events which were the springs of your mis- 
fortunes? I address you both : for, it is but 



16 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LfTE. 

too plain, that good Mr. Sensitive does 
not find himself at all happier than Mr. 
Testy ! 

Sensitive. Indeed, I do not! it is but 
about twenty years since we were together 
at college, where you used so often to rally 
me on the refinement and delicacy of my 
feelings. But, I am, in spirits and consti- 
tution, full sixty years older. Every thing 
shakes my nerves to anguish, and writhes 
the tender sensibilities of my soul. No 
man of genius can find it otherwise in the 
world, I am always touched with miseries 
of my own, or trembling with sympathy in 
the distresses of others. When thunder 
does not stun my ears; they are affected 
still more disagreeably — by the grating, 
perhaps, of a fork on an earthen plate — 
or, by the murmurs of a company of amor- 
ous cats. Even the twang of a bit of lea- 
ther on a rusty key, is enough to spoil a 
whole hogshead of the best old wine to the 
delicacy of my palate. The Sybarites, 
w r hose slumbers were broken by the rose- 
leaves folded under them, were coarse and 
torpid in their sensations of touch com- 



COMFORTS OF HUMAN LtFE. 17 

pared to mine. 1 know not a single smell 
that is not, to my nostrils, mawkishly faint, 
or oppressively strong — no fragrance at 
once sufficiently fresh and sufficiently pow- 
erful. My eyes are but inlets to precep- 
tions of disgust — Lights, shades, colours, 
forms, exhibit, all, but some slight vestiges 
of the essence of order and beauty, dis- 
torted, stained, mutilated, confounded, de- 
faced, ever, to that degree, that it is more 
painful to contemplate such imperfection 
of beauty, than if all were but one waste 
of absolute privation and deformity. Such 
are the impressions to which my feelings 
have, from infancy, become continually 
more and more subject. This is the price 
at which Nature confers the true sensibili- 
ties of genius. To want them, were to be 
a brute: to know them, is to be superla- 
tively wretched. Mr. Testy's skill in mi- 
sery is, by the keen and wise direction of 
a penetrating and active understanding: 
Mine depends on the native constitution of 
my senses, spirits, and vital energies. His 
vigilance and discernment in the discovery 
of those nicer evils of life, which elude 

B 



IS COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

the observation of common minds, conti- 
nually rouse my sensibilities of misery, and, 
by their influence on me, prove their own 
delicacy and rectitude. My nature, so 
tremblingly alive to woe, gratifies him 
with evidence, that his theories of human 
wretchedness are not groundless. It is 
true, that neither of us has had any ex- 
perience of those things, which are misfor- 
tunes even to the rudest and most vulgar of 
mankind. Our fortunes are entire. Our 
families are healthy, and, as the world 
deems it, prosperous. We are not suffer- 
ers by any of the common afflictions of 
humanity. Ours are the Sorrows of which 
only men of extraordinary discernment and 
feeling can become conscious. 

Merry. Ha! ha! ha! Are not you the 
very Samuel Sensitive and Timothy Testy, 
whose Groansand Sighs, whose Dialogues of 
Miseries, whose whole muster-roll of ills, 
have lately 7 awakened so many unlucky souls 
to a sense of woes, of which, but for your 
d — d good-natured kindness, they would 
have remained utterly unconscious? Ah! 
you old fools! Do you still cherish the odd 



COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. ]§ 

humours which made one of you so ridi- 
culous, the other odious and ridiculous too, 
at college ? 1( ou must go about, must you, 
with a murrain upon you — singing, with 
the cracked voices of a couple of maudlin 
balUid-singers, i( Let us all be unhappy to- 
u gether!" — What a couple of screech- 
owls! Had I not known you, I should 
have inclined to think, that the interlo- 
cutors in your dialogues were not in earn- 
est; that they spoke merely to ridicule the 
peevish folly of those, who are never easy, 
unless they may be allowed to teaze us with 
a long tale of their ills. But, I know, 
that., since the interlocutors are no other 
than my old acquaintance — you could not 
but be in sober earnest. You mistake 
wrong headedness for genius — hypochon- 
dria for sensibility. You fancy, that the 
i( Muses have taugltt you to complain.''' But, 
never men were more mistaken. Some 
may laugh at you: some may sigh with 
you! But, to the laughers, you are merelj 
butts: and they who sigh and groan over 
your dialogues, only sigh in concern for 
vour follv. 

B 2 



20 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

Ckear. Nay ! now you are too severe— 
But our friends, by not resisting a bias of 
their tempers, which exposed them to so 
much raillery at college, have certainly 
taken a good deal from the comforts they 
might otherwise have had in life; and 
have, at last, made themselves much more 
conspicuous for absurd despondency and 
peevishness, than for refined discernment 
and genius. — How unwise to be for ever 
conjuring up blue devils before one ! How 
much better to cull with the bee, honey and 
fragrance from every weed, than with the 
wasp, and other noxious insects, to extract 
poison from the essence of every flower? 
You, Testy and Sensitive, have, by your 
own accounts, had all those advantages 
which constitute prosperity and good fortune 
in the common estimation of mankind at 
large. Merry fellow and I, on the contrary, 
after a multitude of efforts, and a series of 
most provoking disappointments, find our- 
selves, each, not now in possession of 
more than will supply him with a clean 
shirt, every day, and a neck of mutton. 
But, we have such a sanguineness of tern- 



COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE, 21 

per, that we find hope start constantly 
up to us, out of the bosom of disappoint- 
ment. He possesses such a knack at de- 
tecting the gay and ridiculous, that he dis- 
covers matter of laughter in every incident, 
and in every appearance that comes before 
him. ISior is there an incident in my own 
fortune, or in that of others, in which I do 
not, without effort, and by the natural turn 
of my mind, find occasions of chearful- 
ness. In the town, we find the works, of 
Art, and the charms of refined social life. 
In the country, are the beauties of Nature, 
and the reliefs of retirement. Riches give 
the luxuries of life. Poverty is favourable 
to its energies and its virtues. In travel- 
ling, we are amused with perpetual variety 
of exercise, society, views of nature, and 
intelligence of affairs. Residence quietly 
in one place is favourable to composure, 
ease, and continued meditation. Books 
are inoffensive companions of all hours- 
Conversation has, in it, an interest and a 
vivacity which books do not always give. 
Testy. A truce with your common-plac^ 
B 3 



££ COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

details. Can you deny the truth of what 
we have stated in our Dialogues r 

Merry. The terrible evils of your Dia- 
logues are merely excitements to enliven 
pleasure by diversifying it. They are sti- 
muli to awaken sensibility. They are mus- 
tard and Cayenne pepper to give the ge- 
nuine seasoning to happiness. — What say 
you ? Shall we compare our Catalogue of 
Comforts with your Mountain of Miseries t 

Sen. Agreed. — My nerves are so worn 
out by sensations of refined distress, that 
I should almost wish to forfeit the privilege 
of genius^ for the sake of relief from the 
agonies under which I am dying over 
again, every hour ! — 

Tes. And agreed — say I — Your disap- 
pointments in the comparison will only add 
another chapter to those Miseries of life 
which our Dialogues have enumerated. 

Ckear. Well, then ! we four meet here, 
at the same hour, to-morrow\ 

Merry. We meet. 

Test. 

Sen. 



> Good morning, gentlemen. 

rn 
Cheat 



J* \ Good morning 
ar. 3 to 



COMFORTS OF THE COUNTRY, 



DIALOGUE THE SECOND. 

COMFORTS OF THE COUNTRY. 



Chearful, Merrufellozc, Testy, and Sensitive* 



Y. 



Scene — Hyde-Park. 



Testy. 



ou find us punctual to our appointment, 
gentlemen ! I was impatient to hear what 
you could say in support of pretences to 
happiness, which I doubt not but I should 
find your emotions, in the course of any 
twenty-four hours, and in spite of any 
pains you might use for their concealment^ 
— to belie. 

Merry. Ah ! Mr. Testy ! we shall teach 
you to be happy, in spite of your teeth ! 

Sen. I have done nothing but dream of 
the relief you promised, since we separated 
b 4 



24 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

yesterday morning. Last night, in sleep, 
methought I saw my old friend Testy in 
the form of an enormous toad, feeding on 
my entrails, and instilling his poison while 
he fed,— till you, Chearful, in the figure of 
a Stork, as iny dream represented it, came 
to destroy the filthy noxious reptile. At 
the effort, with which it seemed, that the 
stork made away with the toad, my sleep 
forsook me. Propitious be the omen ! — No 
offence to my dear friend Testy. — But, it 
cannot be !— Genius can never see the ca- 
lamities of life in another light than that I 
see them in! — Nor is it possible for my 
sensibilities to be deadened by any opiate, 
to the torpor of dulness ! 

Chear. Take courage, man! We shall 
quickly undeceive you. Your morbid sen- 
sibility shall be restored to soundness. 

2es. Come on ! The pleasures of the 
country — if you please? In this rural scene 
— hid from every appearance of the town, 
as if we were at any remote distance from 
it — with so pleasing a diversity of wood, 
water, and verdure before us— while these 
animals play around — while the scene is so 



COMFORTS OF THE COUNTRY. 2o 

unusually free from the approach of men — 
while the gentle, yet natural varieties of 
its level, deceive the eve and the fancy, 
and make it seem as if the whole were a 
landscape, in the creation of which, Art 
had no share, — what better subject can 
you chuse, than the Comforts of the 
Country ? 

Merry. Ay ! comforts the country has— 
sufficient, it appears, to w r arm the imagi- 
nation of old Testy himself — and to de- 
ceive him out of his croak of misery!— 
Ha! ha! h^!— 

(C. 1.) 

Chear. Its general comforts tran- 
scend every praise with which even the 
raptures of sensibility and genius have yet 
extolled them. Its atmosphere gives light- 
ness and activity to the play of the kings 
which inhale it. It presents an endless va- 
riety of lights, shades, colours, and na- 
tive forms, the most delightful to the heart 
and imagination of man. It salutes the 
nostrils with perpetual freshness and fra- 
grance. Its air, its water, its genial sun- 



26 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

shine flow round the surface of the bodv, 
in a manner the most refreshing: and invi- 
gorating to the sense of touch. The ears 
are charmed with constant choruses of 
voices, giving all the possible varieties in 
the expressions of animal joy. Milk, fruits, 
animal food prepared with the utmost sim- 
plicity compatible with cleanliness, there 
afford the most exquisite gratifications to 
the taste. All is animated; and yet, with 
a diversity of animation, more interest- 
ing than if there were nothing before us 
but one vast multitude of human beings. 
How interesting the varieties of vegetable 
life, in the springing grass, the flowering 
shrubs, the leafy aspiring forest-trees, the 
yellowing corn, and the falling fruits! In 
the very breezes which agitate the air; in 
the rains which descend with refreshment 
and new animation to vegetative life ; in the 
incessant transitions of heat ; in the effu- 
sion of light from the Sun, and in all it* 
varieties of refraction and reflection; as in 
the agitation of the waters of the rivers, 
the lakes, and the ocean ; and in all the 
great changes of exterior nature ; there is 



COMFORTS OF THE COUNTRY. 27 

an appearance of vital activity the most 
pleasing and elevating to the heart of man. 
What enchantment — to contemplate the 
diversities of animal character and manners, 
in the peasants, and their more enlightened 
masters, in the sheep, the cattle, the horses, 
the dogs, the beasts, and birds of game, 
the fishes of the lakes and rivers, the geese, 
turkies, pigeons, and all the fowls of the 
poultry-yard! How interesting the diver- 
sities of surface — hill, dale, vales, dells, 
knolls, craggy heights, wide expanding 
plains, and lofty masses of mountains — 
lakes, rivers, springs, brooks, pools, and 
cataracts ! The diversions — hunting, fish- 
ing, horse-racing, and so many games of 
agility and, strength,— are the most favour- 
able to health and spirits. The very la- 
bours of the country — plowing, reaping, 
the keeping of sheep, the management of 
cattle, the attentions given to the pro- 
gressive growth of cultivated vegetables, 
are delightful to all whose strength is net 
unnecessarily oppressed by them. All the 
energies of fancy acquire in the country 
their proper elasticity and force. The feel- 



28 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

ings, the appetites, the passions, and all 
the vital powers gain, in the country, their 
proper tone. All the arts, whose practice 
and works are the most adapted to the ge- 
nuine utilities of life, are to be seen in the 
country. In the country, we hold that 
converse with Nature, which insensibly ele- 
vates us into the presence of God ! — 

Tes. Rhapsody ! declamation ! the mad- 
ness of poetr3 r , without the inspiration ! 

Merry. Nay, you shall quickly hear 
somewhat much more provoking to a tem- 
per like your's. What say you to the Com- 
forts of an East Wind in a cold April 
Day?— 

Sen. An East Wind on a cold April 
Day ! Oh ! my poor nerves ! Oh ! my 
nerves ! 

(C. 2.) 

Merry. Ay ! an East wind in the month 
of April, however it may shake your 
nerves, is not so ill a wind, as not to blow 
good to many an one. — It rouses the frame 
which, at first, shivers under it, to a con- 
sciousness of lively sensibility. It. aw.akens 



COMFOKTS OF THE COUNTRY. 29 

torpor to vivacity. It furnishes a man with 
a portable barometer, which he can no more 
lose, than drop his own bones out of his 
body. It improves the charms of a flan- 
nel waistcoat, a Welsh wig, a warm great- 
coat, and a snug place ft the chimney- 
corner. It gives, by ejeep-ifelt contrast, 
more genial freshness, and softness, and 
balmy fragrance to the breezes from the 
West. It presents, by its influence on the 
over-Sensitive and the Testy, appearances 
go ridiculously impatient and deplorable, 
that it is impossible for even sympathetic 
tenderness not to be roused by them to 
merriment. It teaches us to take timely 
care of our health, by convincing us — how 
easily that may be shaken. It heightens 
the eagerness of our expectation of the 
genuine Summer of June ; and renders the 
delights of that month doubly dear to us 
when they arrive. Above all, it furnishes 
matter of condolence, carping, and com- 
plaint to multitudes of persons who cannot 
live without them, and whom Spring 
might, otherwise, deprive of subjects over 
which to murmur! 



30 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

Tes. Deuce take such comforts ! Do 
you think to insult me ? I could have said 
ten times more against an east wind, than 
you have mentioned in its favour. . Be- 
sides, I cannot well perceive, whether you 
be in jest or in earnest? 

Se?i. Oh! in earnest, most certain! v! 
I find my spirits wonderfully revived by 
what he has represented. At his first 
mention of an east wind, I felt my bones 
to ache, as if all the witches in Lapland 
had been, in one assembly, muttering their 
prayers backwards, and sticking pins into 
a w r axen image of me. My limbs and 
teeth shivered, as if by the attack of fifty 
tertian agues. But my heart is encou- 
raged by Merry fellow's observations, I, 
for my own part, never do enjoy a snug 
seat in the chimney corner, so much as 
when a cold April east wind is blowing. 
And you Mr. Testy, are never half so 
pathetic and sarcastic in your complaints, 
nor ever complain with such an air of self- 
complacency , as when an east wind makes 
you to shiver and shrug your shoulders. 
—A crumb or two of comfort are better 



COMFORTS OF THE COUNTRY. SI 

than unappeasable vexation and perpetual 
agonies. 

(C. S.) 

Chear. But the comforts of a rainy 
day in the country, — especially if the rain 
begin to fall suddenly, after one has pre- 
pared for an excursion of pleasure, which 
is thus disappointed, — are among the true 
felicities of life. — You enjoy, perhaps for 
some hours, that charming flutter of 
solicitude between hope and fear, which 
constitutes the crisis of interest to the hu- 
man mind, lou now imagine that the 
rain may cease in time for your excur- 
sion, — now fear that it cannot, — now fancy 
that a particular part of the horizon begins 
to clear, — now see cloud thickening upon 
cloud, till you must hope no more. This 
is that charming suspense, for the sake of 
which men frequent the theatre, read 
books of history and of fiction, study the 
works of a Shakspeare and a Homer, 
crowd to coffee-houses to wait the arrival 
of the mails when the news of some 
eventful battle is expected. How. cheap 



32 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

is this dear suspense purchased, when one 
can be made to feel it all by no mightier 
cause than a few hours fall of rain ! And 
then, when, by a small effort, the mind 
turns to within-doors amusement, how 
pleased it feels with itself for the triumph 
over its disappointment ! The resources 
are most comic to which a family will, on 
such an occasion, apply themselves, in 
order to find at home what they cannot 
go to seek abroad. The very endeavour, 
even though awkward, and in part suc- 
cessless, excites general merriment. All 
sullenness is put out of countenance. The 
amusements multiply. The day seldom 
ends without having made every one hap- 
pier, than was to have been expected 
from any out-of-doors diversion— To the 
serious and musing, a rainy day in the 
country is ever the favourite time for in- 
vention — to woo the muse, to produce 
improvements in the arts, to indulge those 
pensive walking reveries in which the 
tender and ingenuous mind takes peculiar 
delight! Such a day, too, reconciles one 
to. many a book, which would otherwise 



COMFORTS OF THE COUNTRY. 33 

be thrown aside, as dry and inustv. It 
gives new consequence to the games of 
Hunt -the- Slipper and Blind maits-Biiff. It 
gives interest to a country dance, even 
with my lady's woman and the butler, not 
without the help of a chair or two, as 
dumb partners, to make out the set. It 
is more favourable to love, than even the 
meeting at a horse-race or a country-ball. 
It arms the eyes of maidens of thirty-five 
with new powers to kill. And it procures 
hearers to bed-rid grand-dames and story- 
telling grandfathers, when they would 
otherwise be left without a soul to smooth 
the pillow, or wheel about the great chair. 
It— 

Sen. (rubbing his hands, and looking up 
with great animation) Ob! the delights 
of a rainy day ! Oh ! O the delights of a 
rainy dry! And then, how charming: in 
the country it never rains, but it pours ! 
I am your convert, Mr. Cheariul ! Indeed, 
indeed, Mr. Testy! you and I are, like 
two old fools, entirely in the wrong! 

Tes. Take the fool to yourself. Mr. 
Sensitive! I disclaim him. It is all buf- 
c 



34 COMFORTS OP HUMAN LIFE. 

foonery, man ! 'Sdsath! it puts me macl 
to hear persons talk, who dare thus 
to make a sport of their own wretch- 
edness ! You might just as well take up 
Petrarch's mock praises of the itch, or 
repeat the Dutchman's eulogy on an ague ! 
— Pray, my masters, cannot you as well 
reckon it among your eural felicities, 
to be exposed in a country retirement, in 
which you had thought of finding only 
pastoral innocence, benevolence, simpli- 
city, and virtue, to be there exposed to 
all the knaveries and tricks of vulgar 
malice and ill-humour, just as if you were 
hustled among a party of American sailors 
at Wapping, or of Irish labourers, on a 
Sunday evening, in St. Giles's ? 

(C.4.) 

Merry. Even from those knaveries 
and impertinencies of rustics, it is 
easy enough to extract very comfortable 
amusement 

They spring from a vulgarity and a 
coarseness of sentiment, to which one is 
proud to feel one's self superior. They 



COMFORTS OF THE COUNTRY. S5 

display a want of honesty, which flatters 
one with the consciousness of superior 
virtue. Their low cunning betrays, ever, 
a narrowness of understanding, which ena- 
bles him who defeats them to please him- 
self in the knowledge of his superior wis- 
dom. 

They acquaint one, in the most effectual 
manner, with the humours, caprices, and 
selfishnesses of rustic character. They 
enlarge one's knowledge of human nature, 
and thus qualify one more and more for 
the practice of life. 

They are merely the originals of those 
teizing incidents in rural life, of which the 
imitation is the most diverting, laughter- 
provoking part of the comic drama. He 
who laughs at Tony Lumpkin and mine 
host of the Three Jolly Pigeons on the 
stage, must surely laugh much more, when 
he meets the real characters in country 
life. 

How charmingly, too, one's patience is 
exercised by intercourse with such cha- 
racters! By such a rusticating probation, 
the mind is formed to a fortitude, with 
c 2 



36 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE* 

which it can encounter the vexations of 
matrimony, the tumults of a rout, the 
bustle and clamours of the entrances to 
the theatres on a benefit night, the riots 
of the box lobby loungers, or even an 
insurrection among the gods in the upper 
galleries ! 

Besides, the wit, the cunning, and the 
malicious merriment of impudent and 
tricking rustics, are precisely those efforts 
of mind, which most Englishmen would 
sacrifice almost any thing to gain an ac- 
quaintance with. The selling of bargains; 
the grossly smutty jest; the mimickiy of 
irremediable personal defects; the re-, 
proach on account of qualities implying 
nothing dishonourable; the archness of 
which malice and villany are the sole 
distinctions: — are not these the species of 
wit, humour, and cleverness, by which an 
Englishman is ever the most delighted, 
and the most ambitious to distinguish 
himself! 

And then, what can be so insipid as the 
mere milk and water of country simplicity 
and innocence, unmixed and unvaried * 



COMFORTS OF THE COUNTRY. 37 

A dash of the pungent, the saltish, the 
sour, and the bitter, is ever necessary to 
give a due relish to the sweet, and to the 
mild. One would as soon prefer a bottle 
of mawkish capillaire for drinking, to a 
bottle of old port— or apple sauce for fish, 
to soy and anchovies, as be content, in 
the country, with the mere Golden Age 
manners of pastoral Phillips! 

Tes. Well, gentlemen ! much good 
may they do you- these joys which you 
prize so high, — of converse with rude and 
knavish rustics ! I envy you them not. 
But I own I should be not a little diverted 
to see you both in the enjoyment of this 
favourite rural pleasure of yours ! You 
might affect to appear happy ! But, you 
would certainly be in the very situation of 
the German Baron at the feast of the 
ancients, in Peregrine Pickle, whose eyes 
were watering, his stomach in the throes 
of \omiting, and his whole frame almost 
in convulsions, by the effect of the phy 
sician's Laced asmonian broth, at the very 
moment when he was struggling to praise 
it the most lavisbl} r . 

c 3 



SS COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

Sen: I know not very well, what to 
think of this sort of pleasure. I should 

imagine it a genuine one. But I fear I 
shall never be able to brace up my nerves 
to the enjoyment of it. 

Tes. (with a sneer) Pray, Mr. Chearful, 
have you not been able to find out a 
Comfort, €C in the attempt to lay out one's 
" pleasure grounds, on a plan which 
< c your ornamental gardener and his la- 
" bourers entirely defeat, in carrying it 
€C into effect?" or * in labouring to im- 
u prove your breeds o/sheep and cattle 
" at a similar prodigality of expense, and 
u with equally disappointment?" 

(C. 5.) 

Chear. I have, indeed ! — The pleasure 
of forming your plan, of anticipating your 
future groves, belts, clumps, lawns, knolls, 
ruins, trickling rills, foaming cascades, 
winding walks, and basons expanding into 
artificial lakes, no mortal can deprive you 
of. You possess it in spite of both orna- 
mental gardener and obstinate blockhead 
labourers. It is a pleasure of imagina- 



COMFORTS OF THE COUNTRY. 39 

tion— in it's nature one of the most ex- 
quisite. 

How delightful to expend one's money 
upon a design in any of the arts of refine- 
ment and genius, which is of one's own 
contrivance! The more capriciously sin- 
gular and fantastic the design, so much 
the more does its author usually delight to 
javish a boundless expense in carrying it 
into effect. What is sarcastically termed 
this or that man's folly, is commonly 
that which it ha? been the very pride and 
charm of his life to create. 

There is a pleasure, which much more 
than counterbalances the vexation, when 
one's designs in ornamental srardening ap- 
pear to be frustrated, only because the 
genius of every person one can employ, is 
so exceedingly below one's own, as to be 
incapable to carry them into effect. It 
is the very consummation of pride, to find 
yourself thus without a second and with- 
out a judge ! 

But, the greatest felicity of all is, that 
the disappointment of such a design, by 
means of which its author is innocent, 
c 4 



-tO COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

becomes his defence against the censures, 
to which its success might have exposed 
him. A gentleman can insist, that it 
would have been, not a Folly, but a Pa- 
radise, which his manager and workmen 
have hindered from being either the one 
or the other. He can still lead his visitors 
over his bogs, crags, and quagmires; and, 
with the prophetic eye of taste, explain 
their wonderous capabilities. He can re- 
new his complaints perpetually, that de- 
signs so noble were defeated so miserably ! 
And, while he prepares new funds, he can 
have the delight of meditating plans much 
more magnificent! 

(C. 6.) 

Merry. And, for successless attempts 
to improve the breeds of cattle, — cannot 
the disappointed improver console himself, 
as did old Mr. Shandy, when the mare, 
from which he expected a fine pad, pro- 
duced a mule ? — " See, Obadiah, what 
" you have done !" — " It was not I that 
" did it, please your honour!" — u How 



COMFOKTS OF THE COUNTRY. 41 

« do I know that ?"— with a look and a 
laitgh of triumph. 

(C 7.) 

Tes. But, I defy you to enjoy amuse- 
ment in the most enchanting rural walk 
in England, if your toes be covered with 
coins, your shoes tight, and your feet over- 
heated. 

Chear. Why not: It is not only when 
we are quite free from pain, that we 
enjoy comfort. To be in that condition is 
rarely, if ever, the lot of man. But we 
are so constituted, as to be capable of 
enjoyment whenever our sensations or 
sentiments of pleasure are more numerous 
and more intense than those which affect 
us with pain. If one's corns give more of 
pain than one derives of pleasure from 
the views of nature, the society, the glow 
of energetic activity, which constitute the 
charms of the walk ; why should not one 
instantly stop, release the imprisoned foot, 
and enjoy that repose which becomes 
peculiarly pleasing the moment any one 
begins to find activity uneasy \ Now, the 



42 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

pinching of the shoes— the shooting pain 
of the corns — what are they but useful 
stimuli to excite the walker to a keener 
enjoyment of the pleasures before him ? 

Besides, how many little sarcastic jokes 
does not such a condition of the foot na- 
turally prompt the walker's wit to ? The 
fancy is the most fertile in the invention 
of incidents, sentiments, and imagery of 
grandeur and beauty, at those times when 
one's mind feels none of those which are 
called the petty vexations of life. On the 
contrary, the wit is the readiest and bright- 
est, when those very teizing vexations are 
perpetually striking fire from its edge. And 
who would not be &.wit> at so trivial a 
charge as that of suffering a little by a 
corn and a tight shoe ? 

Such a condition of the foot, too, affords 
a good occasion of paying a gallant and 
liberal compliment to one's company, whe- 
ther one proclaim or bravely hide one's 
sufferings in the extremities ! 

And the consciousness of having, in 
one instance, conquered pain, arms a man 
with new fortitude to keep it, on future 



COMFORTS OF THE COUNTRY. 43 

occasions, more at a distance fiom inter- 
meddling in his pleasures. 

Merry. , So, your advice is, Mr. Chear- 
ful— 

Tune cede cornti ; 
Sed 9 contra audentior ito. 

Chear. Most certainly. 

(C. 8.) 

Sen. But " the torment of gravel in 
<c the boot, which you have endured till it 
<c becomes absolutely intolerable." 

Merry. Tis nothing. Take off your 
boot. Use your hands 

" Hi motus animorum, et haec certamina tanta, 
*' Exiguijactu pukerisy compressa, quiescent. 1 * 

The pleasure of finding that one can so 
easily rid one's self of such an annoyance, 
much more than compensates for the slight 
uneasiness it has given. 

(C. 9.) 



Tes. " Newspapers delayed — till their 

:elligence is old?" 

Merry. A vexation annihilated, trans- 



44 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

muted into a comfort — by the charming 
suspense it creates — by the anticipation it 
allows — by the inventive conjectures to 
which, in the interval of delay, it pushe* 
the mind ! 

(C. 10.) 

Tes. " Following a slow cart, on horse- 
*? back, through a long and narrow lane r" 
Chear. Charming opportunity— to mark 
narrowly the produce, culture, and beau- 
ties of the scenery on either hand — to 
watch the Sittings of the clouds on the 
sky above — to distinguish the limits of the 
horizon around — to view the perpetually 
varied colouring with which the rays of the 
setting sun are reflected from the clouds, 
and diffused, with faint lustre, over the 
plains and mountains — to listen to the 
mingled noises of the joy, vexation, and 
other natural sounds of men and other 
animals, arising from the hamlets, villages, 
and farms — to mark the rising smoke, with 
whose ascent so many pleasing ideas are 
naturally associated — to suffer the mind to 
elide insensibly into that stream of reverie 



COMFOKTS OF THE COUNTRY. 45 

into which such a concurrence of objects 
tends naturally to lead it ! 

(C. 11.) 

Sen. " A sluggish attempt to amuse 
■* yourself by working in your garden, 
" when it is against your feelings to make 
" an effort, to which good sense power- 
tc fully induces you — what comfort is in 
?< this?"— 

Merry. A great deal of comfort. — It is 
a comfort that never fails of pleasing the 
mind — when it makes an effort to submit 
inclination to duty. 

The consciousness of having made such 
an effort, inspirits the heart to continue it* 
Its continuance augments the pleasure. 
The energies of the body are enlivened by 
sympathy with those of the mind. The 
first listlessness is shaken off. And, in the 
end, the working in the garden prcceeds 
with a conscious triumph of activity over 
spleen and langour, than which nothing 
can well be more grateful. 

So ridiculously wrong, Mr. Testy, are 
you and Mr. Sensitive in your, selection of 



46 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

the themes of Misery in your Dialogues— 
that there is not one of your Miseries, 
but, like this, must, to every mind free 
from morbid peevishness and irritability, 
prove a source of happiness. 

Tes. " But, were you a farmer, Mr. 
u Merryfellow, and had your hay deluged 
" with rain, just when you had got it 
" quite dry enough to be taken in, and 
" had made all the requisite preparations 
u for that work; — should you feel so very 
" comfortable?'' — 

(C. 1£.) 

Merry. Assuredly, I should not feel 
uncomfortable.— I should laugh at such an 
example of the vanity of human hopes 
and human preparations. I should satisfy 
myself with dismissing my work-people to 
suitable within-door tasks. I should re- 
member, that — No?i semper imbres manant. 
— And, if I had your turn of mind, Mr. 
Testy, I should, no doubt, please myself 
with the reflexion, that — if the hay-har- 
vest prove bad, hay will but be, in pro- 
portion so much the dearer;— and that, 



COMFORTS OF THE COUNTRY. 47 

the more my crop is spoiled, so much the 
more must my gains be enhanced ! 

Sen. Very well! Mr. Merryfellow — 
Very well, indeed ! You give new life to 
my heart! Do, lubens, manus! I am 
convinced. I am satisfied, that almost 
every one of our fancied Miseries is to 
you, and may become to me, a source of 
pure and genuine joy ! 

(C. 13.) 

Tes. Have you, Chearful or Merryfel- 
low, ever, in the country, met the vexa- 
tion of receiving a parcel of tenants at an 
annual dinner, when they pay their rents, 
urge their grievances, and make their 
numberless requests — just before you leave 
the country on your return to town for 
the season ? Have you found it possible to 
take pleasure in the awkward bashfulness 
of some of them — the rude impudence of 
others — the fulsome flatteries of a third 
parly — the growlings and coarse sarcasms 
of a fourth— their retchings and spittings, 
their management of knives, forks, spoons, 
so filthily at cross-purposes — the voracious 



48 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

rapacity of their eating — the eagerness of 
their drinking — their conspicuous jealousies 
of one another — their mutual quarrels, 
which even your presence cannot restrain 
— and, at last, the general intoxication 
which lays some senseless and speechless 
under the table, sets others to boxing, 
sends some off on horseback, with a haste 
and an incapacity of steadiness that threaten 
to break their necks by the way? 

Chear. Neither Mr. Merryfellow, nor 
myself is so opulent as to have ever had 
opportunity to experience, in his own per- 
son, the vexations, if they be not rather 
amusements, of the scene } T ou describe. 

Merry. But, I have been often present 

while my excellent friend met his 

tenants, on such an annual day of busi- 
ness as Mr. Testy mentions, — and enter- 
tained them at a farewel dinner, before his 
departure for town . 

He accounts it ever the happiest day he 
spends in the country. The kindness of 
his manner conciliates their general good- 
will. Its dignity represses the out-break- 
ings of rustic insolence. A bashfulness, 



COMFORTS or THE COUNTRY. 49 

an esteem,, a modesty pervade their whole 
conduct, which render its awkwardness 
and rusticity rather interesting than dis- 
agreeable. To such a landlord, there are 
no angry complaints to be made. His 
stewards commit no mischievous abuses. 
Mutual mistakes are no sooner explained, 
than thev are corrected. The rack-rents 
are moderate : And, none are received, 
as tenants on his estates, but persons of 
probity, industry, and adequate capital. 
Hence, the payments are always punctual. 
Not a tenant fears the day of payment. 
Not one comes empty-handed. There are, 
among them, no illiberal jealousies. They 
meet round their landlord's table, as if 
they were all children of the same family. 
Thev behave with none of that crossness 
and indelicacy which might, in other cir- 
cumstances, be expected from persons of 
their condition. They listen, with de- 
ference, when he addresses them. They 
scarce speak, but to answer his questions, 
or to pursue a train of conversation which 
he wishes to lead them into. They neither 
eat nor drink with intemperance. Though 



60 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

willing to ,enjoy his society to the last mi- 
nute to which they can suppose that their 
presence will not be intrusion; yet they 
leave him as soon as he can have any in- 
clination to see them retire. The sim- 
plicity of their manners, the characteristic 
diversities of their elocution and converse, 
tender enquiries after their absent wives 
and families, the discussion of subjects in 
the practice of husbandry, gentle unas- 
suming examinations into the industry and 
morals of the neighbourhood, interest his 
mind, while he holds them in convivial 
society at his table. — Such a day never 
ends, without having made them all re- 
ciprocally dearer to one another. 

Tes. Enough of the Country. — But, 
should you find it pleasant to come sud- 
denly to town, in the promiscuous com- 
pany, and indifferent accommodation, of 
a mail-coach? 

(C. 3.) 

Cksar. Why not ? A mail-coach gives 
the comfort of prompt and safe convey- 
ance. 



COMFORTS OF THE COUNTRY. 51 

It is quicker and more safe than private 
carriages can, in general, be. 

It gives you the benefit and honour of 
early rising. 

It shakes one into habits of subordination 
and obedience, by subjecting you, for the 
journey, to the command, in fact, of the 
mail-coach driver and his horses. 

It teaches temperance, by allowing you 
but a few minutes in which to swallow a 
few mouthfuls of ill-dressed dinner, a cup 
or two of milk and water, with a slice of 
dirty bread and butter for a breakfast, and 
perhaps, at a different hoar, a few glasses 
of log- wood water, instead of port- wine. 

It instructs us, not to be squeamishly 
over delicate in favour of sweet odours. 
Crammed up in a mail-coach, with males 
and females of every diversity of years, 
health, and condition , we necessarily learn 
fortitude, in the exercise of all our senses, 
but especially the sense of smell. 

It affords one occasion to learn to sit 
backward in a coach. 

It brings us into an acquaintance with 



52 COMFOHTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

manners and characters, interesting by 
their comic humour and dramatic effect, 
which it would be difficult for most persons 
to gain a knowledge of, in any other cir- 
cumstances. 

It yields such opportunity of recover- 
ing damages for the fracture of a leg, or 
the dislocation of a shoulder, as it would 
be impossible to obtain, if one met with a 
similar accident from his own carriage. 

If the weather be fair — and you dare 
venture yourself among the plebeians on 
the top of the coach — you may enjoy the 
prospect of the circumjacent scenery, 
w T ith higher satisfaction, than it is easy to 
obtain from any other advantage for the 
survey of rural landscapes. 

And when, at last, you alight at Hat- 
chett's in Piccadilly — how agreeable to 
be warned by the crowd and bustle at the 
doors, by the ready civility of the waiters, 
by the elegant fitting up of the coffee- 
rooms, by the excellence of the entertain- 
ment, and by the enormous dearness of 
every thing, — that you are, now in Lon- 
don ! 



COMFORTS OF THE COUNTRY. 53 

Sett. In truth, my dear old friends, I 
cannot but like your excursion to the 
country, much more than those, of which 
the results are exhibited in one of the 
Dialogues between Mr. Testy and myself. 
But, there was, perhaps, a good deal of 
Comfort in our Miseries: And I am in- 
clined to suspect, that there may be Mi- 
sery in your Comforts. Yet, what with 
laughing at what are to others, calamities, — 
what with discovering grounds of Comfort, 
which tempers like mine and Testy 's are 
not forward to discern, — you certainly con- 
trive to make human life appear much less 
unhappy in the Country, than I had, hi- 
therto, conceived it to be. 

Tes. Enough of all this, for the pre- 
sent. — It is, now, late in the morning.— 
Let us separate. — To morrow, T shall be 
glad to hear what you have to say of 
London. 

Chear. I will, with all my heart, give 
3 r ou the meeting. You, Mr. Testy, what- 
ever you may sometimes endeavour to per- 
suade yourself, are already, as appears from 
your habits of life, and your dislike of 
d 3 



i4 t'OMrORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

the country, not a little partial to London. 
You shall find that, in favour of its Com- 
forts, we have at least not less to say, than 
we have already represented in commen- 
dation of the beauties and pleasures of the 
Country. Shall we meet here, at the same 
hour, to-morrow morning ? 

Sen. No; — rather do me the favour to 
make my library at my house in St. 
James's Square, the scene of our meeting 
"and conversation. 

Chear. — Merry. Willingly. 

Tes. I have no objection. There was 
something congenial between this scene 
and the subject of our conversation of 
to-day, which rendered it peculiarly pro- 
per for us to meet, on this occasion, in 
this charming Park. Speaking of the 
Comforts of London, we may just as well 
remain within doors. — 



• OMFORTS OF LONDON. 55 



DIALOGUE THE THIRD. 

COMFORTS OF LONDON. 



Testy, Sensitive, Chearful, and Merryfellow. 



Scene — Sensitive's House in St. James's* 

Square. 

Sensitive. 

Welcome, gentlemen! I am glad to find 

you, all, punctual to your appointment. 
I was, myself, impatient to see you. I 
have not slept sounder these twenty years, 
nor had more pleasant dreams, than last 
night. When I went to bed, I fell, almost 
instantly, into a deep, refreshing sleep. 
Towards the dawn, I awoke, in a pleasing 
state of the spirits. After reflecting on 
what passed in our conversation of yester- 
day, I turned my thoughts, for some mi- 
D 4 



io 



COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 



nutes, on what I was to expect to-day. I 
dropped asleep, again. Asleep, I soon 
imagined myself in a Paradise, in which 
all was abundance, beauty, chearfulness, 
constancy, and gay good-humour. Me- 
thought, there was no subject of vexation 
known in that spacious, rural scene, but 
such things as — getting a little sand in the 
boot in walking — a pinch of snuff scat- 
tered from the fingers by the wind, and 
getting partly into the eyes — now and then 
an unseasonable ring of bells — and other 
such embryo miseries, as made the bur- 
then of the famous rural Dialogue between 
Testy and myself. But, they seemed not 
miseries. They were occasions of gaiety, 
springs of exertion, topics of converse, 
points upon which the mutual sympathies 
of all, were lightly and most agreeably 
exercised. 

Tes. Don't fancy, Mr. Sensitive, that 
I am unwilling to see you deceived into a 
dream of vain felicity. Make yourself as 
happy as you can. Sacrifice your senses 
and your reason to the vainest of delu- 
sions. Depart to Fairy-land, if you can. — 



COMFORTS OF LONDON. 57 

Allow Chearful and Merryfellow to make 
vou — now the butt of their irony and 
laughter— no w 3 the dupe of their serious, 
but fictitious pretences. — The only conse- 
quence will be, that you shall, in the end-, 
find yourself ten times more wretched than 
ever. If your dreams of last night placed 
you in a fool's Paradise ; — be assured, that 
the result of our conversation of this morn- 
ing, must infallibly be, to throw you, in 
your dreams of to-night, into the confu- 
sion of Milton's chaos, or into St. Patrick's 
purgatory ! 

Merry. No, no ! London presents an 
assemblage of all that can be contributed 
to the welfare of social life, by the art 
and genius of man, operating upon the 
richest abundance of the bounties of Pro- 



(C. 1.) 

It is the very Paradise of sensual en- 
joyment. The taste, the touch, the smell, 
the ear, the eye, have, in London, every 
thing supplied, as readily, as by the power 



58 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

of the wishing-cap of Fortunatus, that can 
give them, severally, delight. 

To the Taste, here are provided, from 
every region of the earth, all the agreeable 
varieties and combinations of sweet, salt, 
acid, bitter, pungent, freshly cool, or not 
unpleasingly warm. Every species of ani- 
mal food is to be had, in unrivalled per- 
fection, in the London markets. The gar- 
dens of the Mahometan Paradise, the 
happy vale of Abyssinia out of which 
Rasselas eloped into the world, have not 
a richer variety of flowers and fruits, than 
presents itself to the happy visitants of 
Co vent-Garden. Every pickle-shop teems 
with all the spices of the East, and with 
ten thousand combinations and natural 
varieties of sauces, seasonings, and grate- 
ful stimuli, more than the East ever knew. 
Every tea-shop is rich with the most fra- 
grant and delicious luxuries of the West. 
The wine-merchant's cellars are filled with 
every delicious or exhilarating liquor, na- 
tive or factitious. The confectioner re- 
freshes and gratifies your appetite with 
ices, pampers it with conserves, provokes it 



COMFORTS OF LONDON. 5§ 

*rith cherry-brandy. — The eating-house, the 
coffee-house, the tavern, accommodate us 
with eatables and drinkables, with a promp- 
titude and a tempting facility, much like 
those of the far-famed Lubberland, where 
pheasants, ducks, and geese, fly upon your 
plate, ready-dressed ; and roasted pigs and 
shoulders of mutton and sirloins of beef 
run about, with the knife and fork in 
them — crying, " Come, eat me ! Come, eat 
me!" 

The Smell is not less gratified, in Lon- 
don^ than the Taste. Every drawing-room 
is filled with flower-pots diffusing odours, 
richer than the spicy gales wafted from 
.Arabia the Happy. — Every maiden breathes 
from her lips, a delicacy and freshness, 
which the want of an equally scrupu- 
lous care of cleanliness, elsewhere, de- 
nies even to virgin beauty. Matrons and 
antiquated Spinsters scarce ever come 
abroad, but under clouds of attar of 
roses. — The strong smells of the kitchen 
are removed from access to the nostrils of 
the occupiers of the dining-room. The 
tables are so covered, that the odours 



60 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

of the meats never arise so strong as to 
annoy the sense. The desert presents that 
assemblage of fruits of which the smells 
may be the most happily associated toge- 
ther. The fragrance of green tea awaits 
your descent into the breakfast-room in the 
morning. The grateful and lively steams 
of coffee salute you in the evening. The 
Patent Water Closet removes those smells 
which are, above all others, the most un- 
pleasant. The flow of the Thames gives 
an agitation to the air, by which, all fumes 
noxious to the smell, which may arise, are 
continually dissipated. Every shop exhibits 
linens, silks, cloths, articles of furniture, 
all fresh and fragrant as the bean-flower 
or the new-blown rose. Even the cropped 
hair of the Bond-street beau, is converted, 
as it were, into a bunch of wool or cotton, 
the depository of essential oil of lemons, 
bergamot, or oil of lavender I 

To the Touch, what delicate gratifica- 
tions does not London provide! The finest 
linens; the softest silks; the most agree- 
able to the feeling, cf thetextures which 
Hosiery can frame of the woo^s of Cacti- 



COMFORTS OF LONDON*. 6l 

emire, Angola, Spain, Shetland, or Eng- 
land ; the most delicate fabrics of cotton, 
the skins of deer, dogs, chickens, lambs, 
tanned into the softest material that can be 
brought in contact with the skin ; form 
here our clothing— our clothing, which, 
of all things, acts upon the skin and upon 
the organs of touch the most constantly. 
The shops in every street present them in 
immense profusion. As to other things — 
scarce a wind is suffered to visit the face 
too rudely. The coach, the chariot, the 
landau, the barouche, the curricle, are 
provided, to render out-of-doors convey- 
ance the gentlest and the least fati^uin^ 
that can be imagined. What care is used, 
to make the pavement the most convenient 
for the movement of carriages ! What at- 
tention to keep the foot-walks easy, clean, 
and dry, for the accommodation of foot- 
passengers ! Within the houses, — how clean 
and dry every floor and passage ! How soft 
and warm the carpets ! How smooth the 
tables ! How commodious the chairs ! How 
luxuriously soft the beds ! — Go to the places 
of public amusement— the entrances, the 



64 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

lobbies, the seats, the staircases, present, 
all, the greatest convenience imaginable to 
the limbs, the hands, the feet, and to every 
part of the body, that is brought into ex- 
ercise, in entering those places, or remain^ 
ing in them. — How easy the conveyance 
in boats upon the Thames! How happily 
adapted the cold and hot baths, to refresh 
and renovate the sensibilities of the skin ! 
How charming the diversities of gratifica- 
tion and excitement which the manners of 
this metropolis supply, to satisfy even the 
demands of vice for the highest and last 
convulsive straining of the general sensibi- 
lity of the frame by the Touch! 

What charms the ears, like that confu- 
sion of cries and sounds of all sorts, which 
fill the streets of London ! Goldsmith, in 
his Deserted Village, has well described the 
confusion of sounds rising, in an evening, 
from a scene of rural activity and merri- 
ment, as peculiarly delightful to the 
ear and heart of the man of sensibility. 
But, what is the rustic confusion of sounds 
which he so interestingly mentions, to. that 
infinitely more diversified assemblage of 



COMFORTS OF LONDON. 65 

sharps and flats, concords and discords, 
fortes and pianos, basses, counters, and 
tenors, which meet the ear, in the mingled 
noises of the streets of London ! It is but 
as the lute to the Orchestrino ! as the duet 
of two rustic maidens at their spinning 
wheels, to the grand performances at a 
WiPxchester Musick-meeting, or at a Com- 
memoration of Ha.idel! — The voices of 
English women, as they are heard, in tneir 
liveliest vivacity, and their most polished 
culture, in London, are the sweetest music 
to the ear of man. How delectable that 
entertainment, which the theatres offer to 
the sense of hearing — the more delectable 
to the ear, perhaps — because their repre- 
sentations sometimes yield only sounds 
which do not reach the heart! How de- 
lightful the murmuring noises on the Royal 
Exchange, any day between three and four 
o'clock in an afternoon ! Who is not 
charmed with the thunders of House of 
Commons eloquence — or with the mimic 
thunders of the British Forum — with the 
admirable Maturation of a Conimon-Coun* 
cilman or Livery Orator, on the Hustings 



64 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

at Guildhall ! — or, with the still more con* 
fummate and interesting perfection of elo- 
quence and sweet sounds, that distinguishes 
a contest between a couple of fish worn en 
at Billingsgate ! The Opera representations 
at the King's Theatre present an enchant- 
ment of harmony and melody, such as is 
not to be heard elsewhere. How grand 
and interesting to the eat* — the combina- 
tion of instruments and voices in the gar- 
dens at Vauxhall ! 

But, the Sight is even much more in- 
terestingly entertained in London, than 
any of the other senses. Walk out into 
the st eets — you behold here, all the tri- 
umphs of Art — Houses of the most conve- 
nient structure, and the most ingenious ap- 
plication to the use of dwelling — Carriages 
the most splendid and elegant — Horses, 
such as are not, in equal numbers and per- 
fection of form, to be seen elsewhere in 
the world — Multitudes of men the most 
manly forms, and women the most beauti- 
ful on earth — An assemblage of streets, 
houses, public buildings^ squares, parks, a 
river, ponds, fountains, in all, the most 



COMFORTS OF LONDON. 65 

admirable that have been ever exhibited 
together ! Enter the houses and public halls 
— the interior arrangement shews a dispo- 
sition of apartments the most suitable for 
the admission of light, coloured in a man- 
ner the most inoffensive and grateful to the 
eyes ! — The paintings, the furniture, pre- 
sent forms and colours the most agreeable 
to the eyes, that it is possible for objects 
of such accommodation to become. — And 
then — how charming to see the lions! how 
delightful to ascend the monument! how 
interesting, a walk in the Park ! how agree- 
able to visit the palaces, the collections of 
paintings, the monuments of sculpture, the 
public libraries, the halls of commerce, the 
wharfs, the docks, the forests of masts in 
the river, the li^ht boats in continual 
movement upon it! what so pleasing to 
the eyes, as that immense variety of com- 
modities which meets the view at the doors 
and windows of the shops from the Ex- 
change to Charing Cross ! How convenient 
the assistances to the sight, provided by so 
many opticians and occulists, the most 
eminent in the world! 

£ 



66 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

Chear. The social, the intellec- 
tual comforts of London are infinitely 
more valuable, than those winch address 
themselves to the Senses merely. 

\ ou can contemplate, here, all the di- 
versity of Human Characters and Manners. 
In the streets, in the coffee-houses, in the 
Exchange, and other great market places, 
at ail the great theatres of public amuse- 
ment, in this metropolis, we meet, as it 
were, men of every nation, tongue, and 
kindred under Heaven. JNothing so en- 
gages human curiosity, sympathy, hope, 
and fear, as the contemplation of the di- 
versities of human Character. In the 
immense assemblage of these diversities 
which London presents, it has, therefore, 
a charm of unrivalled power to exercise an 
animating, gladdening influence on the 
heart of man. 

ISot only the exterior and superficial dis- 
tinctions of character and appearance are 
more easily to be contemplated in London 
than elsewhere. The radical, permanent 
distinctions of humour, passion, and in- 
tellect, are, here, the most conveniently 



COMFORTS OF LONDON. 6? 

pfeudedu Mark the emotions of the spec- 
tators at our theatres; view the scenes of 
vulgar contention, which occur in the 
streets; enter the Courts of Justice, and 
mark, the play of character and passions; 
attend the scenes of public business; lis- 
ten to the Debates in the great legislative 
Courts of the Nation; enter into the meet- 
ings of private society ; visit the hospitals 
and the prisons; observe some of those 
many unfortunate accidents which occur 
continually in the course of trade, labour, 
and pleasurable activity: — You shall have, 
in these, a school of human nature and of 
general manners, the interest and the 
charm of which are as unrivalled as the 
instruction that they afford. 

The fortunes of life are illustrated in 
London,- in a manner perhaps still more 
interesting. The rich co-day is poor to- 
morrow. The great man is, before your 
eyes, degraded : The mean is suddenly ex- 
alted : \ is:orous life is extinguished in sud- 
den death: Recoveries from the gates of 
death j the most extraordinary, are conti- 
nually surprizing our observation, and ma- 
e 2 



08 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 



nifestino; a new power of human art over 



o 



p 



the misfortunes and infirmities of nature: 
In the streets, on the river, on the Stock- 
Exchange^ in the transactions of the Mer- 
chants, in the successions of great families, 
every variety of human fate, presents it- 
self to our eyes. — It is not merely good 
fortune that interests and charms our feel- 
ings. Nothing charms, engages, and sus- 
pends our sympathies, more than those in- 
cidents of which it is expressively said — 

" Sunt lacrvmae, rerum, et mentem, mortalia, 
" tan gun l."— 

London is the favourite seat of that in- 
telligence and those Fine Arts which are 
the pride of matt, and which yield the 
greater proportion of the rational pleasure- 
of which his mind is susceptible. Its li- 
braries, its schools, its public institutions 
for instruction, the assemblies for conver- 
sation at the houses of men of distinction 
and liberal curiosity, the Lectures read 
here upon subjects in every department of 
knowledge or scientific art, yield a nourish- 
ment to the intellect, the most various and 



COMFORTS OF LONDON. 69 

the richest that it can enjoy. London is 
the seat of a traffic in literary publications, 
and the centre of a general correspondence, 
by which its inhabitants are enabled to 
drink of every spring of knowledge, the 
moment its waters burst into the light. 
Its coffee-houses become much rather 
schools of intelligence than butteries of 
mere sensual refreshment. Its Post-office 
is a grand central bason, incessantly re- 
ceiving and distributing the Streams of 
Knowledge. Its theatres associate almost 
all the other Fine Arts with the constant 
culture of the most airy and interesting 
branch of our classic literature. Its Houses 
of Parliament, its Courts of Justice, its 
Churches, are the best and most inte- 
resting schools of political and legisla- 
tive science, of the rules of distributive 
justice, of the truths of religion, and of 
the principles of morality throughout 
all their applications. 

It teems with the works of the Me- 
chanic Arts. These are exercised here, 
in a refinement and ingenuity which have 
£ 3 



70 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

never been excelled elsewhere. It is ever 
pleasing not less than instructive to con- 
template the efforts of ingenious industry. 
Enter the manufactures dispersed through- 
out London, — and in its environs : — and you 
shall find every where the active practice 
of those Arts in their highest perfection, 
which do not elsewhere exist but in a ruder 
and inferior state. All the elegancies of 
foreign Art are imported into it: and no 
sooner imported, than, if liked, they are 
imitated and excelled by its native artisans. 
Its quays exhibit, in the goods there con- 
tinually laden and unladen, all the triumph 
and the various magnificence of its Arts. 
The new inventions brought from time to 
time, into practice in it, are more in num- 
ber than those afforded by all the other 
countries of Europe together. You may 
wander from work-shop to work-shop, day 
after clay, and find ever new matter of 
amusement the most instructive! 

Such are some of the general Com-^ 
FOFcTS which London presents for the so- 
lace of human life. It gives all the inter 
resting glow of the passions— all the af- 



COMFORTS OF LONDON. 7.1 

fecting vicissitudes of fortune — all the 
energies of intellect — all the endless diver- 
sity of the bounties of nature,, accommo- 
dated by ingenious Art to the best utilities 
of human existence. It exhibits that tur- 
moil of life., that ferment of activity, that 
mixture of the projects^ the successes, the 
animated eujovments, the virtues, the 
vices, the solicitudes, the sufferings^ that 
association of pleasures sensual and intel- 
lectual, in which it is the delight of the 
human heart, by sympathy or by personal 
interests, to take a part. 

Tes. What are these general Comforts, 
but a mountain of Miseries? 

Merry. Mountain of Miseries? Pray, 
Mr. Testy] — Single out some of them! 

(C. 2.) 

Tes, Single out! What can hfe a greater 

Misery than to face the dust and dirt of 
the roads, the crowding of waggons, the 
rushings, the encounters, the ruins of 
coaches, the march of bullocks, drays, and 
market-women, the foggy atmosphere op- 
E 4 



It COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

pressing the lungs almost to suffocation, 
the smoke, the smells, the jolting on the 
stones, and all the etcaetera of concomi- 
tant ills, which muster against a stranger 
at his first access to this Babylon of human 
crimes, follies, and misfortunes ? 

Merry. Amazing ills, no doubt! The 
bustle of industry and civilized life, a 
Misery to the spectator when he first 
beholds it! — What young beauty, coming 
to town, for the first time, to try the power 
of her form and her eyes at Court, and in 
the other grand scenes of fashionable re- 
sort, ever found such distresses as you 
figure to yourself in the entrance to Lon- 
don ? 

What young heir, arriving, for the first 
time, to pass a winter amid the bustle and 
broil of London amusements and pleasures, 
ever failed of finding a charm exhilarating 
to his spirits, in those objects of obstruc- 
tion, distress, and terror, over which 3 our 
imagination is so deeply afflicted? 

What statesman, hastening to London 
to assert the importance of his influence 
and talents, ever suffered himself to be an- 



COMFORTS OF LONDON. 73 

noyed by the coaches he met? — or snuffed 
the smoke, without feeling it to enliven hi* 
brain more than the best Strasburgh? or 
respired the air of London from his lungs, 
without finding it to affect him with sensa- 
tions more extatic than the famous trans- 
port-giving gas of the chemist can com- 
municate ? 

What matron, a leader of the fashion, — 
weary of Christmas festivity in the countiy, 
— tired of rural society, impatient to lead, 
to shine, to dazzle, to blaze, — hopeful to 
gain prodigious sums by gaming, to set the 
fashion of routes, assemblies, theatres, 
masquerades, — studious to get by intrigue, 
great matches for her daughters, — resolved 
to outshine every rival in the splendour of 
horses, carriages, and dashing smartness 
of dress in the ring in Hyde-Park — What 
matron, what titled dame of fashion, en- 
tering London, with such views, and after 
a tedious rustication — ever felt aught but 
the liveliest joy, when she arrived within 
the perception of those genuine marks 
which you enumerate, that she entered 
the verv immediate accesses to the scene 



74 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

of her expected glories, successes, and 
joys? 

The gardener, bringing his produce to 
market, the nearer he approaches to Lon- 
don and to the market, is but so much the 
more pleased. — The shopkeeper, returning 
from Brighton, or any other favourite wa- 
tering place, is delighted when he arrives 
again within the sound of Bow-bells, and 
meets all those obstacles and that confusion 
which bespeak the town to be full. — The 
merchant from the country, coining to 
make sales and purchases from which he 
expects vast profits, enters London in an 
eagerness of activity and satisfaction which 
renders all the smells, obstructions, and 
feelings of which you complain, the most 
grateful to his heart. 

No ! no !— It is but to the Testy, to the 
morbidly Sensitive, to those w T hose suscep- 
tibilities of joy are exhausted, that your 
fancied disagreeables, in the immediate ap- 
proach to London, do not, by association, 
if not by direct natural effect, give senti- 
ments of joy. They can do much to 
minister to a mind diseased — though they 



COMFORTS OF LONDON. 7£ 

have not precisely the Quack physician's 
power of curing the incurable — though 
they cannot force comfort in upon a mind 
in which the corresponding sensibilities 
have been entirely destroyed. Is it so sur- 
prizing, that he who has long endeavoured 
to persuade himself, that the odour of a 
rose is the foe tor of assa-foetida, should, at 
last, sink into an hypochondria, by which 
the imagination shall entirely pervert the 
Sense : 

ft. But, the sight of accidents of 
wickedness, embarrassment, or personal 
ry in the streets — what comfort is it 
possible to extract from this? Or, how ven- 
ture along the streets of London at all, 
without encountering such: Or, how, in- 
deed, view them, without enduring all the 
agonies :ether self-love or philan- 

thropy c ifiict? 

(C. 3.) 

C. Be not so hasty in unpleasant 

conclusions. 

A co:.: iaks down: the company 

within, are thrown out: one has a leg 



70 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE, 

broken, another an arm dislocated, a third, 
a fine woman, her face bruised and irre- 
coverably disfigured. A bustle ensues. You 
approach at the moment of tumult and 
distress — and are a spectator of the whole ! 
And is there no comfort, think you, to be 
extracted from the sight? It affords, in 
truth, a great deal of comfort. — One feels 
an instinctive sentiment of satisfaction, 
that the misfortune is not one's own. — 
Even the most tender!}' beneficent cannot 
but indulge some complacent emotion of 
emulation or pride, at sight of any thing, 
that in any respect, humbles another, if 
but for a moment, beneath ourselves. — 
The surprize of the accident interests our 
curiosity. — What is painful and piteous in 
it, to the sufferers, soothes our hearts with 
that self-approbation which ever accom- 
panies the consciousness of virtuous sensi- 
bility. We acquire from the sight of the 
fear, suffering, weakness, and fortitude, a 
new acquaintance with their varied imagery, 
by which our knowledge of human charac- 
ter and fortunes is necessarily enlarged. — 
There is ever something ludicrously comic 



COMFORTS OF LONDON. 77 

that intermingles itself with the seriousness 
and the distress of such a scene : — the 
rueful looks and odd exclamations of the 
coachman, the awkwardness of the situa- 
tions in which the persons fell, the insen- 
sibility of some part of the surrounding 
mob, the droll expressions of sympathy 
which escape from others of them, the hur- 
ry and confusion in which they interpose 

to give their assistance ! Consider, also, 

what a subject of conversation the accident 
affords to him who was an eye-witness of 
it, for all the rest of the day ! What con- 
sequence does it not give him in every 
coffee-house or private company, in which 
he tells the tale ? If he be a person other- 
wise of barren intellect, and slender powers 
of converse — it rouses him, even for a day 
or two, to all the importance of a Genius 
and an Orator — proud and unexpected ele- 
vation ! 

Tes. Admirable! Admirable! I must 
confess, that you have made it out verv 
well ! This is a pleasure quite to my own 
heart. I think that I could, indeed, at any 
time, participate with you, in this comfort, 



73 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

(C. 4.) 

Cheat. What should you think of the 
comfort of going to the theatre on the 
first night of a new play or of a performer 
of extraordinary fame and expectation, — 
a Siddons, a Ke.mble, a Cooke, or a 
Betty!— then, finding — that you have 
corne too late — that all the avenues leading 
to the theatre are crowded so as to ren- 
der access impossible— or after forcing your 
way in for a certain length, and being 
squeezed into the slenderest dimensions of 
a weasel, being at last fixed, so as to be 
incapable either to advance or retreat, and 
all bat crushed absolutely to death before 
the crowd begins to disperse; — Or, worse 
still — you will say — getting actually into 
the House, but in a situation too distant to 
allow a view of the stage, where you now 
faint with intolerable heat, are now chilled 
to death by blasts cold as if they bore on 
their wings all the ices of the frozen Ocean, 
have your ears rent with ignorant bursts 
of applause loud as the wolves on Orcas 
stormy shore, are now terrified as if by the 






79 

hisses of myriads of angry cats reinforced 
with legions of rattle snakes., now shrink 
from an insurrection to violence terrible as 
when the earth-born slants heapejd moim- 
tain upon mountain, and planted their 
batteries against the Deities of Heaven ? 

Sen. Horrible! Horrible! I once ex- 
perienced all this ! When, even now, I 
think of it, — my xery flesh creeps at the 
remembrance. 1 can hardly believe my- 
self safe at this moment. It is astonishing 
to me to think, that 1 could survive it ! 

Merry. Survive it ! Kow came you 
to be so eag;er to run vourself into it? 
How came such crowds of old and 
young, rich and poor, stout and sickly, 
males and females, to press themselves into 
the same situation r With a knowledge, 
that the house would be almost empty, — 
would any one of all those be so anxious 
to get, for that night, a seat in it; Is it 
not the fame of the crowd that contributes 
the most to augment it: Tell the same 
multitude separately, that, performers even 
greater than those I named, are to grace 
the scene, but that little or no company is 



80 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

to be attracted to sec them ; — not Gamely 
nor Roscius himself from the dead shall 
have power to draw them together ! It is, 
then, the very crowd, the very difficulty, 
the very squeezing, the very noise of ap- 
plauses, the very discord of hisses and 
disapprobation, that constitutes the grand 
charm of public entertainments like these. 
It is a charm adapted to the feelings and 
the temper of every age. What though 
death, the fracture of limbs, or disease 
never afterwards to be subdued, may be 
the frequent consequence? All joy hovers 
over the verge of misfortune. Man de- 
lights to pursue his pleasures to those 
extreme limits at which they border on 
suffering. The misfortune is accident; — 
the joy, the comfort, is of the essential 
nature of the thing! — Men have died of 
laughing; some, amidst the jo} T s of a 
wedding night; others, of the ecstacy of 
recovered liberty; others, of the satisfac- 
tion which has been shed over their minds 
upon learning, that a wife, a husband, or 
a child supposed to have been lost, still 
lived in health and to their wishes. But> 



COMFORTS OF LONDON. 81 

the joys which thus ended in misfortune, 
were not, for that, the less sincerely joys ! 
Nor are anv other accidents attending; a 
crowd at the theatres, more capable to 
alter the true nature of those joys to 
which they prove, at times, the natural 
catastrophe ! 

Sen. If I had not felt so much bruised, 
and hyp'd, and frightened upon the oc- 
casion I mentioned to you; I might have 
been convinced by the truths you state, 
that it was an occasion of joy. But, I find 
it difficult to reconcile my recollections 
with your reasonings. And yet, I will 
freely own, that you have awakened in 
me, a strong curiosity to make a new ex- 
periment of this comfort of yours. And, if 
Cooke, or Kemble, or Betty shall ever 
again be able to assemble such a multitude 
at either of our Winter-theatres; I shall 
not willingly fail to be in the midst of it. 

(C. 5.) 

Tes. Among the out-of-doors Comforts 
of London and its environs — what think 
you of finding your favourite fields in the 



85 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

most pleasing month of the year, manured 
with soil from the Nightmen's carts, that 
infects the air to a distance, with an in- 
sufferable stench, even for six or seven 
weeks together? 

Merry. Ah! Mr. Testy! Mr. Testy! 
Sure! You cannot but have read Burke 
on " the Sublime and the Beautiful." Does 
not he inform you, that noisome stench is 
one grand source of the Sublime? What 
though the Sublime do not communicate 
exactly that sort of Delight which is de- 
rived from the perception of the Beautiful ? 
You know that the sentiments of the Sub- 
lime, however they may differ from those 
of the Beautiful, are the most elevating, 
the most expanding, the most adapted 
to please the mind with a consciousness of 
the force and grandeur of its own energies, 
of any that can possibly touch the heart or 
the imagination of man. Your field was 
before but beautiful ! The care of the 
farmer has suddenly transformed it, for 
your pleasure, into a scene of sublimity- 
sublime even as the fauces of the lake 



COMFORTS OF LONDON, 83 

Avernus itself! How convenient, how 
interesting the change ! 

Besides, while you pass through such a 
scene, — how pleasing to reflect, that the 
vilest things on earth are capable of being 
rendered the most admirably conducive to 
its fertility and beauty ! When the filth 
of our streets and houses is thus made to 
become the parent of rich, abundant ver- 
dure, freshness, and fragrance to our 
fields and pastures — what is it that we may 
not presume to hope from the bounty of 
Nature, and the Art of Man r How 
pleasing to reflect on the metamorphosis 
which you are, here, in a few months, to 
expect, of this filth to fragrance J 

Xes. Ha! ha! ha ! — \ cry well, indeed ! 
There is nothing, I find, out of which, a 
resolutely sanguine and contented mind 
may not extract matter of happiness. I 
hope Mr. Merryfellow is able to bring his 
nose to sympathize with his imagination, 
when the stench of such a manured field 
swells his soul with emotions of Sublimity, 
or leads out his intellect into a train of 
agreeable meditation on the bounties of 
f 2 



84 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

Nature, and the beneficent utilities of 
human Art ? Eh ? 

Chear. Oh ! He takes care to look for- 
ward, farther than his Nose!— But let us 
change the topic. What should you think, 
Gentlemen, of the Comfort of— stopping 
with eager curiosity — to discover what it 
was so very extraordinary, that arrested 
the attention of a whole multitude of pas- 
sengers in the street, — and finding, after 
many inquiries, to many of which you 
had insolent quizzing, to all unsatisfactory, 
answers, — that it was only an old apple-wo- 
man who had dropped half-a-dozen golden 
rennets from her baskets, — or two drunken 
wenches of the town, that had loudly 
accosted one another by the appellative 
name that belonged the most properly to 
them both — or a seemingly lame and a 
seemingly blind beggar whose association 
had been suddenly broken, so that each 
betrayed the other's secret, — and the lame 
was made to run, and the blind recovered 
his sight? 

Sen.. Provoking enough! 

Chear, But, the provocation may well 



C0MF0KTS OF LONDON. 8a 

be suppressed for the sake of the amuse- 
ment. 

A remarkable contrast of puny causes with 
operose and magnificent effects, or of slight 
effects with a mighty preparation of causes, 
is ever among those sources of Humour 
and Ridicule which prove the most divert- 
ing to the mind of man. To see a crowd 
at gaze over an incident or appearance, 
that, truly known, is not of a nature to 
rouse wonder or to interest curiosity— can- 
not but dispose the person to laugh, who 
feels himself, in regard to such objects, 
quite secure in the Nil admirari. He views 
the whole crowd, as fools in comparison 
with himself. 

It is pleasing to find, where you were, 
at first, led to dread some melancholy ac- 
cident, that nothing such has taken place. 
You fancied, that, perhaps, a child had 
been killed, or some portly alderman had 
dropped down dead in a fit of apoplexy: 
you find, that it is only something too tri- 
vial to move either joy or sorrow: — To a 
good heart what an agreeable disappoint- 
ment ! 

f 3 



86 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LlFtf. 

The sympathy of gaping wonder, which 
you, in such nn instance, witness among 
the crowd, affords a pleasing comic proof 
of the community of the nature of men — 
of the manner in which the chords, whe- 
ther of mirth or of melancholy, vibrate, 
in almost all hearts, in unison. 

There are always a multitude of other 
circumstances, of attitudes, of imagery, of 
looks, of exclamations, the most ludicrously 
humorous, among a mob stopping one 
after another in the streets, upon such an 
occasion. Comedy, farce, satire, the comic 
pencil of the Dutch Artist, have borrowed 
from occasions like this, many of their 
most irresistibly diverting materials. 

Such an assemblage proves, too, one of 
the most convincing evidences, that the 
streets are filled with an immense con- 
course of passengers. For it is soon per- 
ceived, that, not simpleton ignorance and 
wonder in those passengers in general, but 
their numbers, are the true causes, why so 
many of them suffer their attention to be 
in arrested bv the veriest trifles. 



COMFORTS OF LONDON. 8? 

Tes. I give .you joy of such comforts ! 
I'll none of them. 
Merry. You, Mr. Testy, would prefer, 

no doubt, the Comforts of a London fog, 
such as at noon-day, often invests the 
streets in darkness palpable ? 

Sen. Pray, what may these be ? — ■ 

(C. 6.) 

Merry. What! does it not hide from the 
eyes, every object of terrour and distress ? 
Don't it clothe you in jack the Giant- 
killer's Coat of Invisibility? Does it not 
give the advantage, denied but to the fa- 
vourites of the Gods of Antiquity, to walk 
under the protection of a cloud, which 
neither enemies nor over-officious would- 
be friends can penetrate ? Would Horace 
not have been Had of such a foe, to 
hide him from that teizing hero of one of 
his satires, who seized him, and stuck so 
fast to him in the Via Sacra ? Was it not 
of the singular favour of Venus, that 
JEneas was concealed under such a fog, at 
his first entrance into Carthage: Nay, was 
it not under the protection of such a fog% 
£ 4 



88 COMFORTS OF III} MAN LIFE. 

that the Israelites, in their flight out of 
Egypt, eluded the pursuit of Pharaoh's 
host ? 

And then, consider the charming variety 
of burning candles by day, in your apart- 
ments — and walking abroad, at noon, with 
a dark lanthorn ! 

Sen. But, the ludicrous, unfortunate 
ascidents that are apt, in such darkness, 
to befal one in the streets? 

Merry. Why, what though you should 
run your nose against a post, at a time 
when your neighbour cannot see vour mis- 
adventure, to laugh at it? And, if acci- 
dents of more serious misfortune happen to 
others ; your feelings are not distressed by 
the sympathy which, in light, they might 
excite— for, you cannot see them ! 

(C 7.) 

Tes. Well, then f what think you of 
the annoyances of Coffee-house conversa- 
tion in London ? Does not every foolish 
and stupid fellow infest the Coffee-houses 
to w r hich he may have heard, that men of 
genius and intelligence occasionally resort: 



COMFORTS OF LONDON. 89 

Do not such persons the most eagerly and 
pertinaciously obtrude their conversation, 
in the hope to be distinguished as having 
talked well in such a Coffee-house? Does 
not a certain degree of intoxication often 
animate the conversation to boisterousness ? 
Is it not common to meet, in such places— 
perhaps one old fool that, without sense 
to distinguish a pear from a potatoe, shall 
boast to have been against the Government 
ever since the American war, — and who 
knows no rule for his opinion, but to be ever 
against — against r — perhaps another, who af- 
fects on every subject peculiar refinement of 
taste, and a fiery rectitude of opinion, nei- 
ther the one nor the other of which he can 
evince but by bursts of maniac passion, by 
incessant puffings of morbid irritability, by 
the most absurd paradoxes ever expressed 
in articulate speech ? Does there not 
reign in such Coffee-house-conversation, — 
a familiarity as free as that of intimate, 
friendly, domestic converse, — and a rude- 
ness and a pertinacious disobligingness, as 
if all were the fierce railings of inveterate 
enemies; — And vet, is not such amuse- 



90 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

merit as Coffee-houses afford, a resource of 
indispensible necessity to relieve one from 
so many other evils of London : — W hat 
comfort is there to be discovered in all 
this ? 

Chear. A great deal of comfort. — The 
Ups and Downs, the Roughs and Smooths, 
the Bitters and Sweets, form the grand 
charm of life and of conversation. There 
is said to be a pleasure in madness, that 
none but madmen know. And there is a 
pleasure in, now and then, meeting testy 
contradiction, which the mind, while it 
enjoys it, will scarce own to be a pleasure. 
The affectations of the stupid, silly and 
vain ; the curmudgeon selfishness of the 
miserly ; the croaks and groans of the un- 
reasonably discontented ; the coxcomb- 
briskness of the unconsciously superficial ; 
the mischievous sneers of those who ex- 
press contempt of that which they cannot 
understand ; the surly self conceit of per- 
sons who are proud only of prejudices and 
of an emptiness of mind which renders 
them ridiculous to others; the affectation 
and the morbid irritability of those who 



COMFORTS OF LONDOX. 91 

come abroad only to make a parade of 
cankered criticism of every word that is 
littered and every incident which passes be- 
fore them: — All these are, by the order 
of nature, destined for the comic amuse- 
ment of the men whose talents-, whose 
feelings, whose taste, whose habitual dis- 
positions qualify them for the enjoyment of 
every moral and physical appearance, out 
of which the springs of joy and comfort 
may be educed. 

The Boisterous at a Coffee-house eives 
the bluster of rude Boreas in a storm at sea, 
"without his shipwrecks. It affords a mirth- 
moving illustration of the inanity of noise 
and of the powers of wine. It is Bacchus 
and JEolus combining their forces to raise 
a tempest— and most im potently failing ! 

When the Ig.xonimus obtrudes him- 
self into Society which he supposes en- 
lightened ; and strives, by talking away, 
to make a figure in it; — there is that in- 
consistency which Ak en side marks for 
one of the grand sources of the ridiculous, 
— between the confidence of the preten- 
sion and the extreme insufficiency of the 



92 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

means to support it The coxcomb relieves 
us from any painful feelings of compas- 
sion, by the presumption of his claims. 
The ridicule of the contrast between his 
demands and his abilities, is, of course, 
enjoyed in all its purity. The incongruity 
excites the liveliest merriment. The poor 
creature is perhaps heard with a patience 
which deludes him continually, into new 
follies. Or, if, on the other hand, he is, 
at last, driven from the scene, by general 
and unequivocal symptoms of merry con- 
tempt; the correction which his manners 
and his self-conceit receive, compensates 
to our benevolence for the pain he is made 
to undergo. The absurdity of his reason- 
ings, the falsehood of his facts, the awk- 
ward uneasinesses into which he betrays 
himself, are those which Comedy and 
Farce find their very triumph in mimick- 
ing ! 

The Testy Old Fool, w T ho claims the 
praise of discernment, — and a right to af- 
fect consequence, — because he has studied 
for half a century, to profess an opinion 
against the interests and wishes of his 



COMFORTS OF LONDON. Q3 

.country, — and has, constantly, made an- 
swer with a shrug of the shoulders and 
a hard, dry, unintelligent laugh, to every 
impressive argument that could be urged 
for his conviction, — is not less, a fair ob- 
ject of that ridicule which is ever amusing, 
— To be old without the benefits of expe- 
rience^ — can never fail to move merry con- 
tempt, where that contempt is not pre- 
vented by compassion. To have continued 
in the wrong, for a series of years, with 
obstinacy, which neither reason nor con- 
spicuous, impressive events could soften — 
can, in such light matters a^ the topics 
and the strain of Coffee-house chat, — ex- 
pose a man to no sentiments in others to 
them more unpleasant than gay contempt. — - 
To have continued so long, in sentiments 
maliciously hostile to the welfare of his 
country — and w r ith reasons for such hosti- 
lity, the most sillily absurd— must operate, 
as a cause still more powerful, to rouse that 
merry delight which it is in the elementary 
nature of the Ridiculous to yield. But, 
to rejoice in this error of reason, and in 
this malignant pravily of sentiment, as the 



94 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

pride of wit and wisdom — is — wherever 
compassion and indignation can be sup- 
pressed—the very consummation of the 
ridicule, and the last heightening of its 
power to divert ! 

For the crabbed irritability of the 
Critic who pretends to hold forth the 
morbid impatience of his feelings, as a 
proof of superior discernment; this, also, 
is one of the amusements, the comforts of 
Coffee-house intercourse, — not at all one 
of its chagrins. You mark his irritability, 
and the absurdity of reasonings and of 
judgment iato which it betrays him. The 
absurdity is too glaring to leave it possible 
for you to do aught but smile or laugh. 
The absurdity which suppresses serious op- 
position, equally extinguishes serious com- 
passion. These sentiments withdrawn; no- 
thing but the pure gaiety, the necessary 
result from the excited sense of wit and 
ridicule, remains. — INo sweet is to him, 
sweet enough; no sour, duly sour; 
light is to him not sufficiently lucid; 
nor air sufficiently colourless and impalpa- 
ble. — On whatever subjects, the exercise of 



COMFORTS OF LONDON. 9-5 

this humour may turn, it is still enter- 
taining. — Even where to laugh — may im- 
ply some want of goodness or of grace- 
yet to be grave — must exceed all power of 
face. 

Ridicule, then, and gaiety — are the 
principal sentiments excited by those 
which you account the conspicuous nui- 
sances of Coffee-house conversation. These 
emotions, as springing, naturally, from the 
modes of reflexion to which our minds have 
been moulded, — and as being without pre- 
meditated malice or evil intrigue, — are fair, 
ingenuous ingredients, in the general mix- 
ture, in the punch, of the Comforts of Life. 
We may be allowed to take them then, 
to give a poignancy to the flavour of our 
Coffee, to serve as salt and water-cresses 
to our bread and butter, to improve the 
relish and the fragrance of a pot of green 
or black tea! — Tnev have the effect of 
shadings to thnt conversation, modest, 
lively, natural, and in its information and 
distinctions correct, which constitutes the 
better part of Coffee-house Dialogue. 
Their intermixture in it, produces an 



96 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

effect the most strikingly dramatic. — It 
diverts and enlivens us by the contrast 
between its turbulent variety, and the sof- 
tened propriety which ought to prevail in 
our private and domestic associations. — It 
rouses one from drowsiness over the insipi- 
dity of the Newspapers. And, it presents 
us with pointless jokes, bulls, puns, sole- 
cisms, cockneyisms, which form a diverting 
supplement to those things which are the 
flowers of Newspaper wit and eloquence ! 

Sen. It may be, as you affirm. But, 
you seem to labour a great deal, in the at- 
tempt to make it out. 

Tes. Nay; the enjoyments you speak 
of, are sufficiently to my taste. I have 
relished them. And I should be sorry to 
lose the hope of participating in them yet 
again and again. 

Merry. Fairly avowed, Mr. Testy ! 
—You, I think, are qualified either to en- 
joy these Coffee-house comforts yourself, 
or to become an exciting cause of them to 
others. Ha 3 ha J ha! 



COMFORTS OF LONDON'. 91 

(C 8.) 

Chear. But, to a mind of a chearful 
sanguine temperament, London affords 
innumerable other Comforts, even among 
those things which to the Over-Testy and 
the Over-Sensitive might appear to be only 
causes of misery. 

Tes. "Well! what think you of the 
ce comfort of having your new hat ex- 
i( changed for an old one, in the breaking 
" up of the company from some public 
" dinner ?" 

Chear. The accident can give no unea- 
siness to the mind of a person retiring gay 
and elevated, from good company, a good 
dinner, and generous wines. He soars, for 
the moment, above such petty cares. 

Perhaps the exchange is the mistake of 
intoxicated good fellowship. In this sup- 
position, it excites no sentiment but of 
gaiety and good fellowship in the mind of 
the loser. 

It was, perhaps, the trick of one of 
those merry fellows who delight in manual 
jokes. In this case, it is impossible for a* 



{ )S COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

very good-natured man, not to smile over 
the petty joke, — or even for a testy one, 
not to think himself over-paid for the loss 
he sustains, by the contemptuous self- 
pleasing pride of superiority which it gives 
him occasion to cherish. 

Has it been stolen by a person that ac- 
tually wanted a better hat than his own, 
but could not afford to purchase such an 
one ? " Why, then," will the exhilarated 
loser naturally say, — " fair befal the 
« thief!" 

But, whatever may have been the mo- 
tive or mistake of the man that went off 
with the fine new hat ; the old one remains 
with him it has been left with, as a trophy 
of the convivial joy in consequence of 
which he acquired it. He may hang it up 
in his hall, — as the standard of the French 
soi'dlsant Invinciblesis suspended in honor 
of their Conquerors. He may display it 
with the pride with which our tars lately 
displayed the Spanish flags over their trea- 
sures. He can preserve it; as the shells 
of Ossian's heroes were preserved in their 
halls of hospitality. Or he may put it 



COMFORTS OF LONDON. Of) 

aside to be used with merry recollection 
whenever be goes to another public dinner. 
And as long as he retains it— he may boast, 
in his merry moments — what a nice bit of 
old hat he has got ! 

Are not these Comforts ? 

Merry. Ave ; Comforts for which any 
choice spirit would gladly risk the loss of 
twenty new hats! 

(C 9.) 

Sen. But, what <c cure have you, Mr. 
et Merryfellow, for the fever of several 
iC hours attendance in the outer room of a 
" public office r" 

Merry. Oh ! Abundance of preventives ! 
and, even though these should be neg- 
lected, enough of specific cures ! 

The principal perhaps has no wish to see 
you : he is too busy to order your admis- 
sion to his presence till you have wearied 
him out both of his rudeness and of his 
artifices : his attendant messengers carry in 
your card, with scornful indifference: and 
announce, with a proud satisfaction, that 
their patron cannot see you. You wait, 
g 2 



100 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

minute after minute, and half-hour after 
half-hour, in all the impatience of sus- 
pense: others, who came after you, are 
admitted before you ; \ ou get dissatisfied 
with being exposed to the gaze of so many 
persons, — messengers, clerks, and solicitors 
like yourself, — as come and go, from time to 
time, about you : At last you are informed , 
that the great man has gone out at another 
door, ten minutes since; and are left to 
walk away with your finger in your mouth, 
in the same suspense of doubt and expec- 
tation in which you came ! 

Tes. Very fairly put! Now, what Com- 
fort do you know to derive from circum- 
stances like these I 

Merry. Oh ! A great deal ! 
There is a pride in being a solicitor or 
remonstrant at the Offices of the Govern- 
ment of the Country. 

The outer rooms at any of those Offices, 
are a scene in which to study several pecu- 
liar and interesting modifications of human 
business and character not to be viewed 
elsewhere. \ou have there, for nothing, 
rights as interesting as the wild beasts at 



COMFORTS OF LONDON, 101 

Pidcock's, the Taylor of Brentford's su- 
perfine horse at Astley's, the dancing dogs 
at Bartholomew's fair, — and, in the Chief 
of the Office, the personal consequence 
of the bulky Mr. Lambert, of the Irish 
Giant, or rather of the Invisible Girl 
herself ! 

You have opportunity to qualify your- 
self for an enlightened commentator on 
one of the most interesting passages in the 
works of Shakespeare, by contemplating 
and enduring, in real life,— 

** The insolence of office, and the spurns 

** Which patient merit of the unworthy takes." 

You learn what an admirable resem- 
blance there is between the exterior ap- 
paratus and effective management of pub- 
lic business, and those beauties of Gothic 
architecture, so well marked by the Poet 
Gray, — 

" Huge windows which shut out the light,— 
" Long passages that lead to nothing." 

You get into the happiest mood imagin- 
able for improvement in the fire of anti- 
g 3 



10(2 COMFORTS OF HUMAN M?K. 

ministerial eloquence. Love is said, to 
make the dullest of men a Poet:-— And, 
in a similar manner, a due length of 
attendance in the Outer-Rooms at a 
Public-Office, will kindle in almost any 
mind, that inspiration which launched the 
thunders of a Chatham, and which aimed 
the mortal, unerring, resistless shafts of a 
Junius ! 

You have the happiness to serve an ap- 
prenticeship in the school of patience, 
that may serve perhaps to raise you to an 
equality of fame w T ith patient Grizzel her- 
self ! 

During your delay, you have the hap- 
piest leisure to cultivate that sainted per- 
fection of the Indian Fakirs, — ft to fix the 
" eyes with a direction as steady and un- 
" changing as possible, on the point of the 
" nose!" 

The late Mr. Harris of Salisbury taught, 
that the end of tragic representations in 
the Drama, was, to harden the heart gra- 
dually against all the emotions of terror 
and of pity. And similar is the use of a 
due attendance as a Solicitor, in the outer- 



COMFORTS OF LONDON. 1 03 

rooms at a Public Office. It purities the 
breast from the weakness of loyalty, from 
the esteem of ministerial talents, fVorn the 
ambition of intercourse with men of poli- 
tical consequence, from foolish attachment 
to any one form of Government preferably 
to another,, from the sneaking spirit of 
Dependence, from all those sentimen;- 
political idol worship, which unman and 
debase the heart that holds them. 

You learn the true value of Pope's sup- 
plement to the Beatitudes — " Blessed is he 
" who hath no expectations— for he shall not 
" be disappointed !" 

If withheld from penetrating to the pre- 
sence of the Ourang-Outang that sits 
enthroned within, — you find, at least, 
the fulfilment of those words in the book 
of the Revelations — " Without are dogs, 
" and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and 
" murderers, and idolaters, and whoso- 
" ever loveth and maketh a lie!" 

Tes. Preventives and Cures, these, 

which I would — much rather administer^ 

than take for myself — much rather empty 

over the window than into my own sto- 

g 4 



104 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

mach. And yet, I doubt not but if enticed 
into the fever-giving crisis, I should be 
glad to have recourse to them. 

(C. 10.) 

Sen. Well ! what should either of you 
think of " a dance along the streets, with 
" a mad bidl in fall pursuit?" 

Merry. Charming opportunity for the 
display of agility, courage, dexterity at 
escape, and a religious antipathy to mad- 
ness! Charming occasion to join the ad- 
dress of a picaroon in a Spanish bull-fight 
with the lightness and the convulsive move- 
ments of the dancer of the fandango ! 

(C. 11.) 

Tes. But what comfort is there in the 
smell of the meat which salutes your nos- 
trils as you pass through one of the London 
markets in the dog-days ? 

Chear. Oh ! don't you recollect that 
Vitelline, the greatest Epicure of the Em- 
perors of Rome, declared, that no smell 
was so savoury, as that of the putrid car- 
case of a fallen enemy ? — And, if so great 



COMPORTS OF LONDON. 10.5 

a. connoisseur in matters of this nature, 
was not wrong in his taste; much more 
savoury, sure must be the smell of carcases 
which are quite in a condition to make the 
best dishes. — Animal food is not in its true 
perfection till after it has been reduced by 
keeping, the nearest possible to putres- 
cence, without being absolutely putrid.— 
And, what connoisseur in good eating, is 
there, who does not delight to receive the 
information of his nostrils, that any eata- 
bles of animal flesh which he finds are 
quite in a way to have the very fumtt he 
admires, when they shall be put upon the 
table. 

Besides, the market of Covent Garden 
itself does not present in greater variety, 
the stimuli to the sense of Smell, than does 
that of Leadenhall, of Newgate, or of St. 
James's. — These are the true scenes in which 
to enjoy that omnis copia milium which 
Horace so elegantly mentions among the 
highest pleasures of which the human 
.senses are susceptible. 

Again the " acutis naribus" the " uaso 
€i aduiico," the i( suspension nasum" — are 



106 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

phrases used by the Roman writers, to 
indicate a carriage of the nose, that was 
ever regarded, as a sure indication of Wit 
in him who wore his nose in that fashion. 
Now, the fragrance which salutes the nos- 
trils in passing through any one of our 
meat-markets in the dog-days, is apt to 
produce that very arrection and that very 
suspension of the nostrils which those noted 
phrases describe. And who would not re- 
joice to acquire the aspect and the feelings 
of a Wit, at so cheap a rate as that of a 
summer's forenoon's walk among the sham- 
bles ? 

Ah ! what a comfort, what a pride it is, 
to meet the smell of tripe, and cow-heel, 
in a sunny day in July, when the thermo- 
meter indicates eighty degrees of heat in 
the shade ! 

You may recollect, likewise, that Dr. Sa- 
muel Johnson, in conversation with Mrs, 
Piozzi, was wont to describe Porridge- 
Island, as a scene, the fumes from which 
were avoided by many, as a luxury too. 
rich, too inviting, too grateful to the 
sense. But if the steams from Porridge- 



COMFORTS OF LONDON. 107 

Island be so grateful — what is there not to 
be said and felt in favour of those which 
issue in the heats of July and August from 
the sheds and stalls in Clare-market ? 

Se?is. Very w ell ! very well ! In future, 
I shall always, except when I am actually 
passing through our flesh markets, persuade 
myself, upon your authority, that the 
odours which they diffuse are inexpressibly 
grateful to the imagination and to the sense ! 

(C. 12.) 

Merry. But let me particularly recom- 
mend to you, the comfortable dry dust 
blown in one's face, in the streets of Lon- 
don in any windy and sultry day in Sum- 
mer ! 

Tes. Yes ; that is, beyond all contra- 
diction, most comfortable. It is the work 
of the Zephyrs condescending to sweep 
the streets. It w r as a comfort much valued 
by the men of pleasure who rode their 
curricles in the streets of Ancient Rome— 
as Horace bears witness — 

" Sunt quos curriculo pulversm— collegisse juvat." 



108 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

(C. 13.) 

Sen. But pray tell me, how shall I de- 
rive comfort from the annoyances of an 
Organ-grinder or a Ballad-singer, when 
they strike up their Notes before my win- 
dows ; and are so far from being reduced to 
silence by the halfpence I throw out to 
them, that the more I give, so much the 
more lojidly and pertinaciously they pro- 
long their discords ? 

Chear. Discords ! Oh fie ! How can you 
speak so? 

Are notour Organ-grinders and Ballad- 
singers, the genuine representatives of the 
ancient harpers and minstrels, the admired 
authors of all that is peculiarly delightful in 
our national music ? Who that reverences 
the memory of the harper and the minstrel, 
can refuse to lend a delighted ear to the 
Organ-grinder and the Ballad-singer ? 

Does not the true musical enthusiast take 
a pleasure in every species of music how- 
ever simple and rude ? And is not the man 
that has not music in him, fit for treasons, 



COMFORTS OF LONDON. 109 

plots, and every other deed or design diat 
is foul and murtherous i 

Is not the comic of these itinerant mu- 
sicians and the mob around them that lis- 
tens with ravished ears, ever irresistibly 
diverting : 

Shall the Scotsman delight in his bag- 
pipe I Shall the Irishman join ever with 
rapture inhis national Coronach? And shall 
any Englishman confess himself to be with- 
out a taste for those musical charms of 
London, the Ballad and the Barrel-organ : 
Why, my friends,, he is no true English- 
man who can listen without rapture to the 
Butcher's Concert of Marrow-bones and 
Cleavers 1 

Besides, it is not by the natural indepen- 
dent power of the sounds, — so much as bv 
the power they derive from association in 
our minds with the interesting imagery, 
the sentiments tender, sublime, or even 
ludicrous, which originally presented them- 
selves in connection with them,— that music 
pleases. Now, the associations with the 
Organ-grinder's Notes and the Ballad-sing- 
er's Strain, are such, that I should think it 



I 10 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

utterly impossible for either Mr. Testv or 
Mr. Sensitive to hear them without plea- 
sure either serious or gay. 

(C. 14.) 

Tes. But, how should you like the sounds 
of horns, drums, jews' harps, and all the 
etcaetera of mob music, by which I was 
roused from sleep at four o'clock, the 
first morning after I had taken a wedded 
female companion to my bed? 

Merry. Ha! ha! ha! Oh, Mr. Testy! 
Mr. Testy ! Sure, you were too happy to be 
awakened to a consciousness that you were 
in the arms of love and beauty — too hap- 
py — to dislike the sounds that awoke you ' 
— had they proceeded even from a concert 
of cats, — or from the rumbling of ten 
thousand milstones ! 

Chear. Sen. — Nay! Merryfellow has, 
decisively, the advantage here. Had the 
same concert disturbed Mr. Testy's morn- 
ing slumbers, the fiftieth night after his 
wedding, perhaps he might have had better 
reason to dislike it. But, when music only 
wakes to joy, — who shall profess, that he is 



COMFORTS OF LONDON. Ill 

not charmed even by its least skilful 
sounds ? 

(C. 15.) 

Te$. " Well, then! what think you of 
(e the comfort of lying, awake and unwell,, 
" in bed,, at night, — wishing anxiously to 
u know the hour, — and hour after hour, 
u for half the night, being by one little 
" incident or another, hindered from it, 
ec by counting the sounds of the clocks or 
u distinguishing the imperfect articulation 
** of the watchman :" 

Chear* Even this is, in truth, a com- 
fort. — Awake and unwell in bed, one par- 
ticularly wants something that may fix at- 
tention, and so amuse the mind. The 
feverishness, the indisposition of the mind 
to levity, and its temporary incapacity of 
serious meditation, with the absence of all 
the ordinary means of amusement in the 
light, leave it in a destitution of resources- 
to divert ennui, bv which the fever is con- 
tinuallv augmented. But as soon as it 
gets an exterior object of attention, the 
fever is relieved. Watching to count the 



11C COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

hours, — it is diverted from preying upon 
itself: it settles into a state of compara- 
tive composure; and by the effect of this, 
it subsides, at last, into sleep. Does the 
striking of the hour elude one's vigilance 
a first time ? Attention is renewed till, 
either the hour is satisfactorily counted, or 
sleep ensues. In either case, there is a 
gain of ease, of comfort, to him whose 
sleeplessness put him upon such an expe- 
dient. — Every one, who has ever been in 
the situation, knows the truth of this.— • 
You yourself, Mr. Testy, must, assuredly 
have felt it. Your physician, ifyouchuse 
to consult him, will tell you the same thing 
as h 

Sen. On my life, I believe, you are in 
the right. — How I envy you, this art of 
yours, by which you so constantly convert 
the driest bones into rich portable soup ; 
extract a precious spirit out of tinder and 
old rags; change verjuice into capillaire? 
and deprive the nauseous, the noisome, the 
rough, the discordant, of all their native 
power to annoy the senses ! 

1'es. But, it is now late in the morning : 



COMFORTS OF LONDON. 113 

arid an engagement calls me away. Shall 
we meet and renew the conversation to- 
morrow ?- — 

Sen. Most gladly ! I am desirous to 
have the opinion of our friends in regard to 
the comforts of every department of human 
life and affairs !— 

Ckear. Merry. We will chearfully meet 
you. We shall esteem it the greatest hap- 
piness of life, if we can only restore to our 
old friends, that which appears to us to be 
the native tone of the feelings, fancy, and 
senses of man. 

Tes. To-morrow, then, you shall take a 
family dinner with me at Highgate. 

Sen. &c. — Agreed!-— 



H 



114 COMFORTS OF HUMAN' LIFE. 



DIALOGUE THE FOURTH. 

COMFORTS OF SPORTS AND GAMES. 

Sensitive, Testy > Chearful,and Merryftlloi** 



Scene — Testy's House at Highgate, 



Testy. 

Welcome ! Welcome to Highgate, my 
friends!— -you are late.— I have been in 
eager expectation of you, these two hours. 
I almost imagined, that my old cook-maid 
was to have toiled and broiled herself in 
vain, in getting ready a dinner for you.— 
I began to fear, that you were going to 
enabie me to add to the other Miseries of 
Life, that of being disappointed of an ex- 
pected Dialogue -about its Comforts. 



COMFORTS OF SPORTS AND GAMES. jl< 

Merry. Oh! Sir! I must intreat your 
pardon. I am solely to blame. ,1 had 
been reading, before breakfast, the printed 
Dialogue between you and Mr. Sensitive, 

on the Miseries of Sports and Games. 1 

was willing to convince Sensitive, that he 
had mistaken in suffering himself to be 
persuaded, that Misery could so poison the 
best cates of felicity which ingenuity can 
provide for remedies against sorrow and 
care.— An Advertisement in the Morning 
Newspapers told us, that a grand cricket 
match was, this forenoon, to be played in 
Lord's grounds. I asked him and Chear- 
fill to pass that way,— -that they might wit- 
ness the gay excitement of spirits, the 
brisk, light exertion, and the play of 
lively, vigorous health, with which the 
contest of the game was pursued. They 
have beheld it. 

Sew. Would, that I had been one among 
the Cricketers ! 

Chear. It is a game I have often played — 
Even now, I retain strength, activity, and 
spirits not unequal to it. 

Tes. The time has been when I could, 

H-2 



HS COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

enjoy it. But, since I left off* playing it, 
I have seen clearly— what a number of 
Miseries are unavoidably connected with, 
it, 

(C. 1.) 

Merrij. Aye, ay ! You have made the 
discovery, only since you allowed yourself 
to become too restive and testy to use the 
game. 

I, for my part, enjoy still with ardour, 
every Game and Sport, active or seden- 
tary, of which I have any knowledge. I 
need not the excitement of betting, to 
rouse my spirits, and interest my heart in- 
any of them. I can, still, join tiie children, 
m building houses of cards, in playing 
marbles and chuck-farthing, in pitching and 
tossing half-pence. I delight in Fives and 
Trap-ball. I can drive a hoop or wind a 
top wiih any boy at St Paul's School. 1 can 
Hy my kite in the windy weather of Har- 
vest, and iollow it from field to field, over 
hedges and ditches, or through marshes,, 
with as much eagerness as ever Naturalist 
displayed in the pursuit of a butterfly. 



COMFOHTS Of SPORTS AND GAMES. 117 

In Winter, I am charmed with the diver- 
sion of curling. I went to Holland, to enjoy 
skaiting m its true perfection. And when I 
was in Russia, I took the greatest pleasure 
in travelling on a sledge over the snow— — 
and not less in sailing on the ice in a 
sledge boat. ---I can scarce help joining in 
the contest— of Frenchmen and English- 
men, whenever I see the boys or peasantry 
engaged in it, any where in the immediate 
environs of London. I should like to join 
the journeymen tradesmen in playing at 
■ skittles,, were it not for the coarse abuse 
and the sottish drinking with which they 
debase and spoil their game. At Edin- 
burgh I took the greatest pleasure in 
joining the Goffers on the favourite scenes 
for their diversion, called Leith Links and 
Brnntsfield Links. And I was charmed when 
they went on the Meadozc, there to join the 
Company of Archers, and to contend for the 
Silver Arrow — which I had, once, the ho- 
nour to win. Many a time have I had 
my shins broken in playing at foot-ball. 
Indeed, I know not of any one out-of- 
door diversion, easy or athletic, that has 
h 3 



118 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

not a charm for me. There is a charm in 
these amusements, that fires every heart, 
and puts every one's spirits in brisk action. 
They give the glow of health. They brace 
every nerve, and corroborate every muscle. 
There are no miseries necessarily inherent 
in these games and sports. Those evils 
which have been ascribed to them, are 
introduced into them, by the humours, 
the extravagant eagerness, and the folly, 
or the imbecility in health or temper, of 
the persons who join in them. Gaining 
the game-— what a triumph! --Not that 
of a conqueror— not that of a merchant 
counting his Cent, per Cent, profits from 
Buenos Ay res,— more gra tifying to the 
heart ! Unsuccessful,— —you have, how- 
ever; enjoyed the contest of emulation, 
tlie play of spirits, the exercise of agility 
and stratagem, the invigoration of the 
limbs, which it is natural for the active 
and athletic sports to bestow ! Betts and 
pecuniary stakes do not belong unavoid- 
ably to our games and sports. You never 
yet saw a man who delights much in out- 
of-doors sports, without pushing them 



COMFORTS OF SPORTS AND GAMES. 1\9 

to that which is denominated Gambling,--- 
but enjoyed a constitutional jchearfulness^ 
gaiety, and vigorous yet light and springy 
activity. He who has these advantages— 
is to the man who loiters and languishes, 
and turns himself from side to side, on 
his bed or sofa, and slumbers till he be- 
comes incapable of sound refreshing sleep, 
—is to si>ch a person,— as the esgle to the 
ostrich,-— as the leveret to the pig,-— as the 
bounding squirrel to the torpid sloth ■ No 
exercise of serious labour ever equals the 
spirit-stirring, joy-creating, health-giving, 
effects of the games of sport. Care coun- 
teracts the invigorating influence of the 
exercise, in every case of serious business- 
application. It counteracts that influence 
equally, in every case x . in which, by put- 
ting much money to hazard on the game, 
you reduce it from its genuine nature, into 
matter of serious business. It is the lively 
emulation free from anxious care—it is the 
airy activity— it is the unconstrained, un- 
forced exercise of ail our powers of mind 
and body in Games of Sport,-— that renders 
ihem, so eminently, bark and steel to the 
H 4 



J20 comforts of human life. 

mind, — and that gives, by them, so much 
of springy lightness and vigour to every 
limb, joint, bone, sinew, and muscle of 
the whole corporeal frame ! 

Tes. A truce with your dissertation 

Within a few minutes, we shall be called to 
dinner. 

(C 2.) 

Sen. What Merry fellow says of out- 
of-doors Sports, is, to my mind,, highly 
satisfactory.-— But I have always regarded 
the sedentary Games within doors, 
or those which are little better than seden- 
tary, as Games in which listlessness, pee- 
vishness, and torpor, the most remarkably 
usurped the false name of joy? — Is it not 
so? 

Chear. No, indeed ! Cards ! Use them 
in their genuine subserviency to amuse- 
ment ;— keeping at a distance, that spirit 
of gambling which converts the play with 
them into the dullest of plodding busi- 
nesses :— they are one of the most pleasing 
of the artificial solaces of human care. 

How innocent ! how animatingly pleas- 



COMFORTS OF SPORTS AND GAMES. I £1 

ing to children ! the Games of Pope Joan- 
and Commerce! how simple! how ad- 
mirably adapted to compose little folks to 
satisfied amusement in that society with 
their parents and seniors in general, in 
which it is one great art and object of edu- 
cation, to win them to take delight! How 
their eyes glisten! "What keen alacrity of 
attention ! what genuine grace, vivacity, 
and pleasure in their smiles ! how hearty, 
how sweet to the ear, their sudden shouts 
and laughter of surprize and exultation ! 
What an accordant sympathy of gaiety 
and-joy reigns throughout the little party ! 
How the old grow young in heart and 
spirits, amidst the circle ! But for the 
Cards,-— these sparkling eyes would, at the 
hour of seven or eight in a winter's even- 
ing, have been sunk unseasonably in sleep 
or drowned in fretful tears. Little self- 
ish contentions might have been preparing 
them for habits of mutual unkindness in 
future life. There mi2[ht have been none 
of that association of amusement between 
them and their seniors in the family, 
which is ever necessary to make the old 



192 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFR. 

and the young duly fond of each other's 
company ! And then, are not all their fa- 
culties invigorated and enlivened by the 
exercise ? Does it not contribute as much 
as Arithmetic, or the cranks and points of 
Logic, to sharpen and inspirit their reason- 
ing powers ? 

Catch Honours! At a rustic fireside 
— in a winter's evening— when the wind 
blew loud, the snow fell thick and heavy, 

the frost congealed all to ice, without, 

when the shepherd had returned from ga- 
thering in his sheep to some sheltered nook, 
—when the maids had ended their work in 
the cow-house, at the barn, and almost in 
the kitchen,— -when the thresher laid aside 
his flail,-- -when the plowman had ceased, 
for the night, from mending his horses' 
furniture,— when the smearer had inlaid 
\vith his mixture of butter and tar, that 
number of the fleeces of the living flock, 
which it was his daily task thus to cover 
from the cold,-— when the children of the 
family were dismissed from their lessons 
in the school room,— when the old folks were 
induced to join in the general disposition 



COMFORTS OF SPORTS AND GAMES. 193 

to shut out, by chearfulness, the chilness, 
and the horror of the storm,— -while the 
turf and logs were piled high on the hearth, 
and the fire blazed genial, chearful, and 
bright,— Oh, then have I seen the game 
of Catch Honours played with an eager- 
ness of attention, with a frank and hearty 
merriment, with an archness of skill, and a 
drollery in blunders, with a wit and hu- 
mour exciting power, with a joy-creating 
influence, and withal a simple ingenuous 

innocence and kindness, which it does 

my heart good to remember, still ! Xo 
peevishness, no undue idleness associated 
themselves with the Game. It was pro- 
longed, with universal gaiety, till the arri- 
val of the hour of supper and of prayer. 
It seemed, as it were, to hush the noise of 
the storm. And while it was prolonged, 
every heart nestled in some manner, closer 
to another. Ever since then has the Game 
of Catch Honours been dear to me. 
Seldom have I seen an}' thing alike subser- 
vient to the excitement and maintenance 
of genuine domestic joy ! 

Every voice speaks the praises of "Whist, 



124 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

— Millions of hearts are, every evening, 
beguiled, by it, from sorrow. It is one of 
the most successful of all care-killers. It 
is the happiest dispeller of Ennui. Ma- 
trons, widows, and grey-haired spinsters 
find it, even more than ratafia, or cherry- 
brandy, the consolation of their disap- 
pointments, petty emulations, and anxie- 
ties. Parsons, in town or country, invalid 
captains, shopkeepers retired to otium cum 
dignitate, could not live without it. It is 
the grand resource of the gouty and the 
bedrid. It cheers the prisoner : it smooths 
the pillow of sickness. It affords the most 
reasonable interruption of conversation 
breaking out into peevishness or sinking 
into langour. ft unites old and youna, 
male and female, rich and poor, the learn- 
ed and the ignorant, the serious and the 
gay, round the same tables ; and in amuse- 
ment in which, as it is accommodated to 
all tempers and humours equally, they all 
participate alike. It accustoms the mind to 
habits of vivid, chearful attention. It ex- 
ercises it, in foresight, in vigilance, in an 
emulation without envy, in that lively yet 



coMFoirrs of sports and games. 125 

easy play of the passions which is salutary 
to the mind, by agitating, and enlivening 
it, without tempesting it with such storms 
of emotion as might overset the balance 
of the soul, and make a wreck of its rea- 
son, steadiness, and peace. 

It has, besides, other recommendations. 
In its abuse, ft often excites admirable dis- 
plays of female oratory. When made the 
set of pecuniary hazards, it often raises 
to the dignity of gaining money, persons 
who could noc Lave got a single farthings 
by their industry in any one of the use- 
ful employments of life. It absorbs and 
deadens love, ambition, and many of those 
ether passions of which the turbulence is 
the -vise of so many of the errors and 
affectations of men in society. It furnish- 
es the means of that . nich-ado-about-no- 
thing, wanting which, half the world would 
be left without aught by which to please, or 
Upon which to value themselves. 

Tes. Enough of Whist !— unless you 
mean to add, that it is the very Game 
which the placid Deities of Epicurus, in 
their retirement from all inspection of the 



126 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

affairs of this world, play €€ from night to 
u morn,, from morn to dewy eve." 

(C.4) 

Sen. What have you, Mr. Merryfellow, 
to say of " Horse-racing'' and the * Chace?* 1 
You omitted the mention of them, in your 
enumeration of your favourite out-of-doors 
diversions. 

Merry. I have not very often joined 
the jovial parties who pursue the fox and 
stag, and follow the hounds. But, their 
diversions are, of almost all, the most ani- 
mated and pleasing. The cruelty of pur- 
suing a brute animal to death, is lost sight 
oi] while the attention is occupied with the 
society of exercise and amusement, with 
the qualities of the dogs and horses, with 
the difficulties and facilities of the ground, 
with the contest of activity and swiftness 
between the pursuers and the animal pur- 
sued. Amidst the animation of the pur- 
suit, none thinks of those little incidents 
• as Miseries, which an over-Testy or over- 
Sensitive spectator might number as such. 
Horses, hounds, hunters, are excited to 
die very height of joy and eagerness. 



COMFORTS OF SPORTS AND GAMES. 127 

The capture or death of the hare, fox, or 
stag, exalts the amusement and the agree- 
able agitation of spirits to the utmost 
pitch. Does the animal pursued, elude, 
or baffle the pursuit: Admiration of his 
powers of escape, gives almost as much 
pleasure, as would have been derived from 
the triumph of the dogs.-— The voices of the 
dogs resounding, in the woods and over the 
mountains, in the open air, have somewhat 
the effect of a bold and rich music to ears 
in any degree accustomed to them. New 
health; new vigour, new spirits are derived 
from the exercise, to all who take a part in 
it— -derived, not for the present time only, 
but for subsequent life. The race, and the 
activity af the horses and dogs, are highly 
improved. Even the hazards are more 
than compensated by the boldness, skill 
ami activity acquired amongst them. 

House Racing exhibits the noblest of 
our domesticated animals, in the exercise 
of their most generous and interesting 
qualities. It promotes their improvement in 
the qualities which render the race in ge- 
neral, the most profitable, as a subject at 



128 COMFORTS OF IIUSIAN LIFE. 

commerce, the most useful as assistants to 
our labours and reliefs to our indolence. 
The emulation with which they run, the 
swiftness they display, the manner in 
which the triumph is held in suspense to 
the last moment of the race, are unavoida- 
bly interesting, in no ordinary degree, to 
the minds of the spectators. Horse-races 
acquire, likewise, a new interest, from their 
becoming, in some manner, calls for die 
assemblage of the healthy, the active, and 
the gay, to social and convivial amuse- 
ments in which comedy and farce inter- 
mingle themselves with the Heroic of 
these Games. Trade and liberal Intelli- 
gence are, at the same time, promoted, 
improved, enlivened. Those trivial inci- 
dents of less pleasing effect which Mr, 
Testy might number among the Miseries 
of the Horse-race and of the Chace, are 
but the shades requisite to give due effect 
to the lights in a picture, — the passages 
between the grand apartments in a palace, 
—the contrast and reliefs in au orna- 
mented landscape,— -that infusion of titters 
without having tasted which, we should 



COMFORTS OF SPORTS AND GAMES. 12Q 

never find the cup of unmixed sweetness, 
exquisitely delicious. 

(C. 5.) 

Sen. I was once, you may remember, 
fond of Music and Danctng. My taste 
for Music is, now, the torment of my life. 
I dance no more. 

Merry. Dance no more ! Dance no 
more ! I dance still with as much agility and 
vivacity, as when we were together at the 
Dancing-school Balls, in the recreations 
allowed us from our early studies. I in- 
tend to continue to dance, till I shall be m 
the condition of the Frenchman mentioned 
by Goldsmith— t 

" And the gay grandsire skilled in gestic lore, 
H. Has frisked beneath the burthen of fourscore." 

-Dancing, not intemperately nor unseason- 
ably pursued, is the most salutary of exer- 
cises. It puts every joint, limb, and sinew 
of the body in free and lively motion. It 
quickens the flow of the blood, the pulsa- 
tions of the heart, the performance of ail 
those functions within the frame by which 
life is sustained and exhilarated; It enlivens 
i 



J30 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

the nicer sensations of the body, and 
with these, all the more delicate sensi- 
bilities of the soul. It attempers brisk 
motion to divine grace of attitude and 
gesture. It allies amusement to refined 
and elegant art. It assembles the young 
in parties of pleasure in which innocence, 
vivacity, and delicacy necessarily preside. 
It restores to those who are fast advanc- 
ing in middle age, all the fresh viva- 
city and gaiety of their spring of life. 
It has often made the withered spinster 
forget her wrinkles; and has made the 
senior despise his gout and his corns. 
There is much of native chearfulness in the 
simple, natural exercise of dancing, by 
those who are in the prime of their health 
and their years. To those who fondly at- 
tempt to shine in it,-- -though nature and 
the waste of years have denied them the 
power,— -it must have some secret charm by 
which it is bewitchingly pleasing to them. 
Their intermixture in the dance has, in 
the most admirable degree, the power to 
divert the spectators and the junior part- 
ners in the activity of the diversion, with 
all that is most ludicrous in Comedy and 



COMPORTS OF SPOUTS AND GAMES. 3 31 

Farce. Do the feet of the Dancers beat 
time to the Music? Hoy/ charming this 
consent of the Music of sounds with that 
of Motion ! Besides, how ingenious those 
imitations, partly natural, partly allegori- 
cal, of acts in real life, which the dif- 
ferent species of Dances present ! I love 
the Scottish Country-Dance and Heel, the 
English Hornpipe, the French Minuet 
and Cotillon, the German Walse, the 
Spanish Fandango, the Morrice-Dance of 
the Moors, the pretty wanton trippings of 
the Dancing-Girls in Egypt, and all the 
pantomime movements of the young com- 
panies of priestesses of pleasure attached 
to the temples of Bramah in the East. I 
am charmed no less with the sight of the 
dance than with actually taking a part in 
it. How I admire the light and varied 
steps of a Parisot and a Hilligsberg ! 
Much more, however, am I pleased with 
those Dances, many-figured, and w T oven in- 
to a regular Drama; in the performance of 
which numbers of Sylph-like figures, male 
and female, move, with enchantingly airy 
activity, on our Opera theatre; and of 
12 



132 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

which the pantomimic power carries almost 
as much meaning to the mind through die 
eye only, as if the ear were addressed in 
the Dialogue of a legitimate Drama. 

Chtar. Enough of Dancing! The ge- 
neral principles which have been stated 
in respect to the Games and Sports we 
'have enumerated may be applied to all the 
rest. 

Tcs. But your Joys of Games and 
Sports do not exclude our Miseries of 
them! 

(C.6.) 
Merry. What ! Call you it a misery 
" to slip and fall in a ludicrous posture 
u in skaiting ? '' This is the best amuse- 
ment of the sport. It excites more merri- 
ment than if one should run ten mdes 
without a fail. It makes those around 
laugh so heartily, that the person who falls 
cannot but laugh himself lull as merrily 
as any one among them. Look at boys 
amidst their diversions — the merriment 
comes chiefly from the tricky ludicrous 
accidents, and surprises, such as your 



COMFORTS OF SPORTS AND GAMES. 133 

fall, on the ice, which happen as the game 
proceeds. 

(C. 7.) 

Chear. " Angle, without a bite for 

l ( hour after hour, or after a fine Jack h 

<c on your hook, let him escape." — What 

is all this but—a perpetual renovation of 

attention and hope an improvement of 

patience— bloodless amusement the en- 
joyment of all the sport of fishing, without 
hardening one's heart, or making one's 
hands dirty with the slime and blood of 
the fish? And when the great jack once 
on your hook, slips so dexterously off 
again—is not this a most interesting re- 
presentation of the fate by which, when 
good fortune in the affairs of the world 
seems caught,— it suddenly glides away 
again ? Is it not a fine warning to the 

Angler to be himself on the watch, even 

thus to make his escape whenever he shall 
find himself hooked almost to his ruin by 
any of the false arts of the world ?-— There 
are comforts in the fruitless angling, in 
the loss of the jack, much preferable, for 



134 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFlt. 

many minds, to whatever could have been 
derived from the fullest success. 

(C. 8.) 

Tes. " A covey in view — after a long 
'* day's fruitless fag — then a flash in the 
" pan." 

Merry. Oh ! the disappointment in this 
case, is so truly ludicrous, that it is im- 
possible for even him whom it befals, not 
to be infinitely diverted by it. 

(C. 9.) 

Sen, " Tearing your fair partner's dra- 
" pery, by the awkward movement of your 
' ' foot and leg in a dance/' 

Merry. Oh! the Lady can never be 
displeased with an accident which only 
evinces your activity to please her, to ex- 
ceed your dexterity ! She may attribute it 
to the agitation excited by the power of 
her charms. She may consider you, as 
amorously anxious to get as near to her as 
possible. And, it is an old observation, 
that, on all occasions the women like to 
be approached by men who are bold and 



COMFOIITS OF SPORTS AND GAMES. 153 

spirited, though a little awkward. Your 
partner is pleased : the rest of the party 
are diverted ; and you go down the rest of 
the dance, only with so much the more 
vivacity. Besides, the accident, by the 
apologies it calls for, brings you into more 
familiar and intimate conversation with 
your fair partner. Many a lively fellow, 
just fallen overhead and ears in love, has 
contrived by such a seeming awkwardness, 
to tear his partner's gown and petticoat, 
in hopes to make his way by the rent, into 
her good graces, so that he might after- 
wards acquire a right to take still greater 
liberties with her undergarments. 

(C. 10.) 

Tes. ci Dancing to the music of drunk- 
u en, unskilful fidlers, who keep you inces- 
" santly changing from jig to minuet — and 
*' from minuet to jig," 

Merry. He who persists to dance to 
such music, must take a pleasure in the 
dance, or in his companions in it, which 
is not to be spoiled by the worst efforts of a 
drunken fidler.— -Besides, the worse, the 
14 



J3() COMFORTS OFHUMAN LIFE. 

more irregular, the music; — -so much the 
greater is the merit of the dancer that can 
pursue it, and keep time with it: — while, 
on the other hand, he who is fond of danc- 
ing without being a proficient in it,— has 
in the badness of the music, a good ex- 
cuse for not beating time to it, and for 
the awkward prancing, skipping, and hob- 
bling of his steps. — The exquisite dancer 
may reflect, with pleasure, that between 
him and the musicians, is exactly reversed 
the fact of the famous epigram— 

" How ill the motion with the music suits ! 
" " So Orpheus fiddled, and so danced the brutes !" 

The bad dancer may console himself with 
the reflexion, that the motion and the 
music suit each other well, since hecanpot, 
for his life, dance worse than the musi- 
cians play. — Take it how you will; here 
is Comfort, and nothing but Comfort.— — ~ 

(A servant entering whispers Testy) 

Testy. — Gentlemen ! I fear that you must 
add to your other Comforts, that of a 
spoiled dinner. In the first place,— -every 
thing has been kept at the fire— till the 



COMFORTS OF SPORTS AND GAMES. 137 

boiled is boiled to rags, and the roast is 
roasted to powder. In the next places- 
all has been on the table, tiil it is quite 
cold.— -This comes of Mr. Sensjtiye's 
eagerness for Comforts, and Mr Merry - 
fellow's assiduity to obligehim.---But, come, 
let us try whether we may not have gained 
in keenness of appetite, what will enable 
.us to relish even a spoiled dinner: 



13S COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 



DIALOGUE THE FIFTH. 

COMFORTS OF TRAVELLING. 

Testy, Sensitive, Chearful, and Merryfcllox* 



Scent" «The Drawing Room. 



Testy. 

"Yes! Chearful, I was abroad long enough 
to learn an impatient distaste of French 
and Italian Cookery. And, the whole 
time of my Travels, was so much a pere- 
grination of Miseries, that it is, even 
now, Death to me, to think of it. The 
pilgrim who trudged from Alcala to Lo- 
retto, with unboiled peas in his shoes, 
had not more torture in his journey, than 
I in my Grand Tour. I was fleeced by 
inn-keepers ; robbed by valets ; whirled 



COMFORTS OF TRAVELLING. 139 

with rapidity in pest-coaches where I 
should have wished to move on gently- 
dragged on at a snail's pace when I desired 
promptitude and velocity. I went to see 
paintings, buildings, and statues, which 
have nothing to recommend them to no- 
tice, but that fool after fool has, for cen- 
turies, been accustomed to praise them 
against his conscience, each that he might 
not seem less a Connoisseur, than another 
who had done as much before him. I was 
conducted, by my bear-leader, from capi- 
tal to capital, with a promise to shew me 
striking diversities of modes and manners. 
But, I found Paris like London, Rome 
like Paris, Vienna like Rome, Petersburgh 
like Vienna, and even the Asiatic Moscow 
and Constantinople not so much distin- 
guished from our European Capitals, as to 
compensate me for the trouble of having 
gone to see them. I went to visit moun- 
tains, lakes, rivers, vales, forests, orna- 
mented grounds, celebrated in the Tiue 
Histories, the Munchausen Memoirs of so 
many modem travellers. But, it was still 
only wood, water, and ground— -a Dutch 



}40 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

man's dinner, three rounds of beef, three 
plates of salt-fish, three buttered apple- 
pies,— -a sailor's best waistcoat, velvet be- 
fore, and velvet behind,— a Citizen's pros- 
pect from his villa at Islington, the dusty- 
road, the same succession of passengers 
which he views from his shop-door in 
Cheapside i Went I to visit the manu- 
factures of Art ? What did thev exhibit— 
but the misery of toil and its vanity, — the 
affectation and the ridicule of human in- 
genuity,— the oppressions of authority and 
constraint? What so ridiculous, as to see 
two men gravely rubbing two slabs of mar- 
ble one against another for a whole day :— 
What can be so much an exhibition of 
human misery and oppression, as to see 
hundreds of children, in very infancy, shut 
up together in one comparatively nar- 
row work room, — pallid and sickly as so 
many sallad plants forced in the shade*-- - 
breathing nothing but phthisic and asthma, 
amidst flue and dust and a noxious almost 
mephitic air, continually inspired and je- 
spired by their own lungs,— watching with 
reluctant attention, the movement of cord* 



COMFORTS OF TRAVELLING. 141 

and spindles, and the extension of threads, 
— -and constantly shuddering under the 
eye and the rod of an unfeeling task- 
master?— And, then, to think, that all 
this is only to spoil the bounties of Na- 
ture—instead of adding to the accom- 
modations and felicities of human life ! 
The thought puts me distracted.— -I ate at 
the Tables d y Hott~—?L medley of insuffer- 
ably impertinent company !— a profusion 
of wretched dishes,— in which there was 
an admirable rivalry between the badness 
of the ingredients and the filth and nau- 
seousness of the cookery employed to dis- 
guise them ! What I was obliged to drink 
for wine, was a wretched rot-gut worse 
than the most villainous table-beer which 
could be served out from a Loudon tap- 
room, or the weakest distiller's wash ever 
given to fatten oxen or pigs. The beds 
were hard as a Scotsman's lair of ferns or 
heath, and nasty as a hog-stye —-Within 
the British dominions, the Irish made 
me drink myself to the most feverish inr- 
: toxica tion-~ then called me to make my- 
self a mark for their pistol shots in con- 



142 COMFORTS OF HUMAM LIFE. 

sequence of its effects---and after all, 
loudly boasted their hospitality to me ! 
The Scots infected me with the itch- 
poisoned me with oaten cakes and whisky 
— harrassed me to death by dragging me 
here to admire the soft beauty of their 
craggy heath-covered mountains, and 
there to wonder at the sublime expanse 
of their peat-morasses and quagmires. 
But, they were above all, the most teazing 
and ridiculous, when they insisted upon 
their genius for improvements in hus- 
bandry; and quoted, as instances, their 
skill — to make horses starve on chopped 
furze, that might have lived and thrived 
on corn and hay— and to obtain scanty 
crops of grey oats on land where grew 
before, only the nettle, the duck-weed, 
and the Cardans Bent diet us ! I know not 
what I had to do to travel. I am sure 
that I have learned by it, nothing which 
it is a pleasure to remember. 

Chear. Oh! Mr. Testy, you have had 
a thousand advantages from travelling, if 
you would only own them to us, or at 
least to your own heart ! 



COMFORTS OF TRAVELLING. 143 

(C. 1.1 

The diversities of Nature and human 
character may be less numerous and less 
striking than the inexperienced imagina- 
tion is willing to suppose them. But, such 
diversities there are, And it is the most 
pleasing office of the human intellect to 
trace them-— as in travelling — 

(C. 2.) 

The mind has within itself more or fewer 
resources for enjoyment, in proportion as 
it possesses a larger or smaller store of 
knowledge upon which the fancy, the pas- 
sions, the affections, and the reasoning fa- 
culty may be employed. But, the ele- 
ments of that knowledge are only senti- 
merits such as have been uttered from an 
impassionate heart, and imagery such as 
■when presented actually pictures itself on 
the fancy, and excites new emotions in the 
breast. Now, where are we to gain an 
acquaintance with these sentiments and 
imagery? Not from books: These but re- 
vive them, by artificial and arbitrary signs^ 



144 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFT.. 

in minds in which ihcy were before pic- 
tured.— Not from the oral information of 
others : We can no more understand oral 
than written information, if we have not 
in our minds those primary sentiments and 
images to which it refers ; and of which all its 
combinations are necessarily made up. The 
sight of the very features of Nature ; con- 
verse with man in all the native and arti- 
ficial varieties of the species; can, alone, 
impart that genuine knowledge which in- 
vigorates the understanding, enriches the 
fancy and gives it the true spring of ge- 
nius, warms, elevates, and expands the 
heart. This is the grand acquisition to be 
gained by Travel. It compensates for every 
petty vexation. It is, in spite of every 
disagreeable incident, a perpetual spring 
of pleasure even to the most torpid and 
peevish minds. 

(C. 3.) 

Then, Mr. Testy, think of being able to 
tell among the untra veiled, that one has 
been in France or Italy ! — It is satisfactory 
to think that no man can stop me short in 



COMFORTS OF TRAVELLING. 145 

a speech, or knock me down in my argu- 
ment, by appealing to a practice abroad 
of which he has had opportunity to get a 
knowledge while I know nothing of it.— • 
Is it not to some testy and patriot tempers, 
a pleasure worthy to be purchased by a 
thousand vexations and fatigues — only to 
curse the French, Spaniards, Italians, and 
Germans, and all that they have among 
them, in the plain God-damn-me English 
of honest John Bull? Is it not charming 
to acquire the privilege of smattering 
broken French or Italian, with the same 
authority as if it were the most correct and 
pure, — authority which you animate and 
maintain because you have smattered the 
gibberish in its native country? Abroad, 
a young man may sow his wild oats with 
less loss of character, than if he did the 
same amons: the neighbours of his familv 
with whom he is to pass his subsequent life 
at home.— What a licence of story-telling, 
too, does not a traveller acquire ? He may 
have feasted on lion's flesh, with good Dr. 
Shaw : With Mr. Bruce, he may have 
eaten part of a cow, and turned out the 

K 



146 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

rest to grass : he may have wandered in 
the fairy land of some Juan Fernandez, 
with Robinson Crusoe — or lived with Le- 
muel Gulliver among Houynhmns — tra- 
versed oceans in a canoe with Benjowski — 
or atchieved even all the mightiest adven- 
tures of Baron Munchausen ! — This is a 
pride that may distinguish him through life. 
It will give, perpetually, new fire to his 
imagination: it wall enable him often to 
rouse the wonder of his friends, and often 
to move their gaiety, if he fail of com- 
manding their respect. — It is almost worth 
while for a Londoner to go to Edinburgh— 
that he may be enabled — to speak of its 
savory smells, — and to insist that all 
Scotland is scarce bigger than St. Paul's 
Church-Yard. — He should go to Ireland — 
if it were but to satisfy himself whether 
children there grow out of the ground with 
potatoes? and whether it be not as common 
in the Coffee-houses in Dublin, to call for 
powder and ball, as for coffee and muffins, 
for two? A travelled gentleman has, among 
the other privileges of the character, that 
of, with impunity, — finding nothing right 



COMFORTS OF TRAVELLING. 147 

at home — affecting an admiration of fo- 
reign policy , morals, and manners — wear- 
ing his dress in what he may pretend to be 
a foreign fashion — and furnishing his house 
with articles of foreign furniture appropri- 
ated each to uses the most opposite to 
those for which it was really intended! 
Besides, his genius is, by his travel, quali- 
fied for whatever is great. — If, Thomson 
observed against the author of Leonidas — 
" He write an Epic Poem ! he never saw 
* c a mountain in his life!" — must not the 
youth that has traversed the Alps, and 
ascended to the very pinnacle of Mont 
Blanc, be qualified for all that is sublime ? — 
And who knows but the travelled youth 
may bring home some new inventions to 
enrich the arts of his country — some im- 
provement of a cork-screw or a shoe 
buckle — a new method of brushing the 
teeth or of cutting the hair?— Sir Henry 
Wotton wrote of an ambassador, — Ci That 
u he was a person sent to lye abroad for 
'■' the good of his country." But, in the 
present time, our young men of fortune 
and our commercial travellers seem to go 
K 2 



148 COMFOKfS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

abroad precisely for some such purposes. 
Does not this 2;ive a consequence to their 
Travels, that should be a consolation and 
comfort to them amidst every petty incon- 
venience, to which their perigrinations may 
expose them ? They are so many specimens 
of the native excellencies of our country, 
which we send out, to impress foreigners 
with opinions in its favour, that may be 
expected to command their curiosity and 
reverence.— They go abroad, too, as 
blocks, on which our broad-cloth and other 
manufactures, are hung for exhibition, 
to promote the extension of our trade.— 
They waste their money, with a profusion 
adapted to give foreigners an idea, that the 
streets of London must be paved with gold : 
And we know, that, to gain wealth to a 
man or a city, there is not, in the world, 
a better expedient, than to persuade peo- 
ple, that the man or the place has more 
than enough of it, already — How many 
delectable love-adventures has not a lively 
young traveller to expect ! — Yorick's inter- 
view with a fair Flemish Dame in Dessein's 
coach-yard at Calais; — or his night-scene 



COMFORTS OF TRAVELLING. 149 

with the fair Piedmontese, — in a double-bed 
room 1 — and curtains fenced and fastened 
with great pins, in a rustic inn, on the 
borders of Savoy ! 

Merry. You say, that you caught the 
itch in Scotland. Be thankful, that it was 
not the leprosy, — the distemper which so 
afflicted the old age of Robert Bruce, the 
most heroic of the Scottish kings! James 
the First, you may recollect, pronounced 
the eulogy of that distemper in saying, 
that the enjoyment, which it afforded of 
scratching, was too delectable for a sub- 
ject, or for any one under the rank of a 
crowned head, to enjoy! When the Scots 
spoke of the beauty of their crags and the 
sublime of their peat-bogs ; if you could 
discover neither the beauty nor the sub- 
limity; you would, at least, have very 
comfortable diversion in the contrast be- 
tween the natural prepossession and the re- 
ality of the things. And when they talked, 
absurdly, of their improvements in Agri- 
culture ; — you could reflect with high 
self-gratification ; how very much the old 
husbandry of England excelled in good 
k 3 



150 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE, 

.sense and in power to create fertility, 
the most boasted improvements of the 
Scots ! — Besides, yon would have the plea- 
sure of surprize in finding, that, however 
happy to Scotsmen the road that leads to 
London, there are other roads and other 
prospects which Scotsmen full as much 
admire, 

Tes. They marched me, with unlucky 
officiousness, up among their Highland 
bogs, moors, and cliffy rocks, in the rains 
of the end of September, and of com- 
mencing October. I was drenched, chilled, 
colded, fevered. I could enjoy no distant 
prospects. Fogs hung over the mountains : 
cataracts poured down their sides. 

Chear. This, then, was the very time 
to enjoy to advantage, the only things in 
the scenerv, on account of which a visit to 
the Highlands of Scotland is interesting. 
Go thither when the lakes have shrunk 
considerably within their banks, when the 
channels of the mountain-torrents are dry, 
when no foo;s hover on the brows of the 
hills, when the forests do not hang down 
their heads dripping with rains, when De- 
solation does not, as it were, visibly brood 



COMFORTS OF TRAVELLING. J 51 

over the heath :— you might as well stay 
away ! — The objects of true interest in 
those Highlands are such as can have 
their interest heightened to the utmost, 
only by the rains and storms of declining 
Autumn and coming Winter. We go not 
there to contemplate softened beauty. It 
is the wild; the desolate, the sublime, that 
we go out to see. We go to enjoy such 
scenery, and to have such sentiments ex- 
cited in our minds, as those of the poems 
of Ossian ! When the Scots treated you, 
as you relate, — they did the honours of 
their country, as handsomely as possible, 
in your favour. However you may, now, 
take pains to persuade yourself, that you 
were unfortunate in the excursion ; I can- 
not but think, that when it took place, 
you must have been unable to resist that 
expansion and elevation of mind which 
it was natural for such scenery, in such a 
season, to produce ! 

Tes. Why, Sir, a man may not be 
sorry to have for once witnessed an execu- 
tion, recovered out of a fever, or to have 
been, by the methods of the Humane 
k 4 



152 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

Society, restored from the suspension of 
his animation by drowning. Yet, it is not 
therefore, to be supposed, that he found a 
delight in the drowning, the fever, or the 
execution. 

(C, G.) 

Sen. But, if one walked to see those 
bos;s and mountains. — with but a single 
shirt beside that on his back, and it 
forgot at a distant inn, — his small- 
clothes galled before and behind, — his 
shoes torn till they would scarce stick on 
.his feet, — his stockings chafed to tatters, 
— his feet bruised, inflamed, and exco- 
riated as if they had been worse than 
parboiled alive ; — should you find a Comfort 
in this?— I can scarce think it. And yet, 
this is what, in fact, ensues to those mul- 
titudes cf pedestrian tourists who swann 
out over, the land, in holiday times. 

Chear. Nay; even in this there is a 
pride. It is a triumph to the Connoisseur, 
thus to make himself the martyr of taste, 
liberal curiosity, and elegant enthusiasm. 
At ..every new rent in his garments, he con- 



COMFORTS OF TRAVELLING. 153 

siders himself to gain a new claim to ho- 
nour. Every blister on his toes, seems to 
give him new consequence, as an admirer 
of heath and gravel. Every time he turns 
his eye on his shirt, he feels so much the 
more elated — the blacker he discovers it 
to be. And, these Comforts of dirtiness 
and fatigue, are the greater, in proportion 
as the persons undergoing them, have been 
previously the less accustomed to any thing 
but finical cleanliness and luxurious ease. — 
To tell the tale of enterprises so disastrous 
and heroic, pro res, afterwards, the most 
irresistible recommendation to the favour 
of one Desclemona after another. — Besides, 
any thing — any thing — rather than nurse 
spleen, and languish in ennui! Any walk- 
ing or other exercise is Comfort, in compa- 
rison with the pain of finding the stream 
of life to stagnate, and existence to be- 
come an intolerable burthen! — 

Tes. True ! true ! Hence, I will frankly 
own to you, it does me good to complain. 
And, should you, CHEARFULand Merry- 
fellow, succeed, as [ am half afraid you 
and banter me out of all 



154 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

my complaints;— I shall, certainly, have 
reason to say, with the Drama-mad citizen 
of Argos — Pol! me occidistis, amid! 

Merry. A truce with complaints. Let 
us rather join Mrs. Testy at the Card- 
table. 

Tes. Willingly ; — on condition that you 
consent, all three, to pass the night, here; 
and that we have a walk by moonlight, to 
try— what Comforts, Cynthia's influence 
can exalt our heads to think of? 

Chear. I guess, that I may assent to 
your proposition, as well in the names of 
our two friends, as for myself. 

Sen. Certainly. A walk by moonlight, 
will be agreeable and quite romantic. It 
will be most pleasing, then, to speak of 
more of the Comforts of Life, and to 
muster them, till we shall learn wholly to 
forget its Miseries. 



PERSONAL COMFORTS. 155 



DIALOGUE THE SIXTH. 

PERSONAL COMFORTS, 



Testy, Sensitive, Chearful, and Merryfellow 



Scene — Testy's Garden, 

Chearfuh 

How pleasing this unclouded serenity of 
the sky! this tranquil diffusion of softened 
light ! the depth, the contrast, and the 
strongly marked outlines of the shadows ! 
the tremulous dancing of the moon's lus- 
tre on those fields towards Pentonville! 
The branches waving; as the western breeze 
rises or subsides; the movements of a 
few cattle here and there; the shadows of 
some scattered wanderers of the human 
species ; the barkings of so many dogs; the 



156 COMPORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

rattling of carriages on the roads; the 
glimmer of lights from a few windows 
around the amphitheatre, with something 
of a glow-worm effect; that chaos of 
humming noises, with many a discordant 
jar, which ascends through the mass of 
darkness over London; with the faint yet 
curiously lucid fringing, on the edges of 
the immense and lowering cloud; produce 
an inexpressibly soothing, chearing, ele- 
vating effect upon the mind, giving it a 
turn to pensiveness, or even to a degree 
of placid, tender melancholy. 

Sen. I have been ever fond of walks by 
moon-light. My mind has been generally 
soothed, in them, in the first instance, to a 
not disagreeable pensiveness. But, the 
solitary meditation has turned insensibly, 
upon the vanity of human things, the mi- 
series of mortal life, the powers of that 
Destruction which is incessantly preying 
on the forms of all material existences ! 
It has then, usually ended in fixing my 
thoughts upon my own Personal Mise- 
ries! Pray, Gentlemen, let us hear what 
you have to say of Personal Comforts? 



PERSONAL COMFORTS, 157 

(C. 1.) 

Chear. Why, Sir, every faculty, every 
organ, every power you have, is an inlet 
of comfort ! It is absolutely your own 
fault, if Eyes, Ears, Nose, Mouth, 
Nerves or Skin convey aught but agree- 
able and salutary perceptions to the mind, 
Your ideas of Consciousness may, with your 
own good pleasure, be rendered ever pleas- 
ing. The exercise of Memory tends per- 
petually to renovate and to heighten all 
our joys. Curiosity aims ever at an acqui- 
sition of knowledge which is the genuine 

o o 

and natural enjoyment of the understand- 
ing. The comparisons and discrimina- 
tions of the Reason, Understanding, or 
Judgment, are in all circumstances, radi- 
cally, agreeable. Your feelings of sympa- 
thy with whether the joys or the sorrows of 
others, have constantly, in them, some- 
thing of pleasing self-complacency. Every 
energy of the fa iiey, gives a distinctly felt 
satisfaction. There is not a si lgte effort 
of an} 7 power which Man possesses, but is, 
by the very consciousness of its being an 



158 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

effort of power, agreeable. One has, from 
nature, or by the aid of art, the means to 
exclude every access of those things which 
might to sense or sentiment, become, in 
any manner painful! You shut the eves: 
you cleanse the mouth : you throw away 
whatever offends the touch, or withdraw 
from it: you move away from disagreeable 
sounds or offensive smells—if you may not 
have them put from you otherwise. Na- 
ture has so accommodated all the organs, 
powers, and faculties of man, to one an- 
other, and to his general condition in life 
and society, that every one of them is, in 
its native soundness and proper exercise, a 
spring of genuine Comfort — and of Com- 
fort onlv. What is more — there is not an 
imperfection of the senses nor of the mental 
faculties and feelings, out of which the 
human mind is not framed to educe to it- 
self, certain Comforts either of reality or 
of delusion ! Not a cross accident occurs, 
but there is a natural disposition in the hu- 
man soul to draw good out of it. If one 
poet have observed 






PERSONAL COMFORTS. 159 

" — ut nemo quam sibi sortem 
" Seu ratio dederit, seu fors objecerit, ilia 
u Contentus vivat." Hor, 

Another has as shrewdly made it a poeti- 
cal rnaxim, that 

" Whate'er the passion, knowledge, fame, or pelf, 
" No one would change his neighbour for himself." 

Pope. 

(C. 2.) 

Tes. A hump-back! What Comfort is 
there in that species of decrepitude? 

Merry. A prodigious deal ! Who more 
chatty — -who more conceited of their per- 
sonal appearance — who more lively in wit 
and discernment — than the little My Lords? 
The hump appears to the little fellow that 
bears it, as if it were a knapsack in which 
he had bundled up all his cares, his follies, 
his absurdities, his ugliness, and cast 
them behind him. It seems that very bag 
of the faults peculiar to one's self, which 
the Grecian Fabulist relates that Jupiter 
allowed man to cast behind his back, while 
he took full in sight before him, the satchel 
blown up with the faults of others, H§ 



1 60 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE, 

who can earn nothing with his hands, may 
get a fortune by lending out his Hump, if 
he have one, for a portable writing-desk. 
It is well known what wealth a little My 
Lord got, at Paris, during the famous 
Mississipi rage, by putting his Hump to 
advantageous use, in this way ! A Hump 
is something that, by making a man parti- 
cular, draws the notice of the world upon 
him : Now, whatever happens to have this 
effect, never fails to prove the means of 
making a fortune. The man, for instance, 
who was known in Leadenhall-Street, by 
the name of Dirty Dick, drew the notice 
of the publick, and of consequence, great 
sales and gains, by the dirtiness alone of 
his shop and person. And it is the same 
with every remarkable peculiarity.— A 
peerage conferred by the King, has per- 
haps, nothing in it more gratifying than 
the address of " My Lord!" But, he 
whom Nature has honoured with a Hump 
on his shoulders, needs no royal creation, 
to enable him to have his ears constantly 
soothed with this high and flattering ad- 
dress, — To perform great things with mean* 



PERSONAL COMFORTS. Iflf 

comparatively trivial and inadequate — is 
ever the pride of human ability: Now, 
who that sees the puny hunchback, would 
expect of him to become the father of a 
vigorous, manly progeiiy, all perfect and 
erect in their shapes : Yet, have I seen a^ 
fine a family of young men as the island 
ever produced, the sons of a little ricketty 
father, whose hump was almost equal in 
bulk, to all the rest of his body: — He was 
naturally much more proud of having be- 
gotten such sons, than if he had been him- 
self a form as manly and faultless as any 
one of them. The excrescence of a 
Hump on the shoulders, too, is not a defi- 
ciency. It is, on the contrary, something 
more bestowed by Nature on him who 
bears it, than the same Nature gives to 
others. He is, therefore, to take it, as 
something vouchsafed him, that is more 
than his due; and to look upon it, as a 
mark, that he is the peculiar favourite of 
the Power from whose plastic hand his 
franie has proceeded. At the worst of his 
case, too, — amidst whatever reproaches 
shall be cast out against him, — the hunch- 

L 



162 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

back may still take comfort to himself, 
and boast, that he is not splay-footed, not 
blear-eyed, nor lame in his hands, nor 
loaded with a polypus on his nose, nor 
with a wen on his neck! — Besides, it is 
remarkable, that persons who are hump- 
backed, have, usually, a corresponding 
conformation of the breast, by which their 
voices are rendered particularly mellow 
and sonorous. Their speech, their music, 
are eminently strong and agreeable. One 
shall be called, perhaps, the little Night- 
ingale; another, the musical StentorJ — 
An advantage, one of the most enviable 
among all the endowments upon which 
men value themselves! — But, I should 
never have done, if I were to recount all 
the Comforts peculiar to the Hump- 
backed. 

Sen. Oh! you have said quite enough 
upon this subject. I am entirely satisfied. 

(C. 3.) 

Tes. Native Blindness! What are 
its Comforts ? 

Merry. Have you forgotten the old 



PERSONAL COMFORTS. ! 60 

blind philosopher's question of consolation 
— " Are there no pleasures in the dark'? " — 
He who is horn blind, escapes numberless 
sights,, which are accounted sights of woe. 
He sees not the altered eye of hard unkind- 
ness. He gazes not his soul away, in the 
hopeless love and admiration of female 
beauty. He is more capable of the Nil 
admirari of Horace, than if he had full 
enjoyment of sight, that sense which is 
the chief inlet of admiration to the soul. 
He is not apt to conceive disgust or preju- 
dice against any one, on account merely 
of an ugly face or an ill-shaped person. 
He is not subject to be more afraid of 
ghosts and hobgoblins by night than by 
day. He has the felicity, when a boy, to 
escape the whole torture of poring over 
School-books, Greek, Latin, or English, 
His other Senses, those of touch and 
hearing especially, gain a ten-fold aug- 
mentation of sensibility, in consequence of 
this want of the perceptions of sight: 
And, since it is to the Touch we owe some 
of our most exquisite sensible enjoyments; 
who would not, to improve that, willingly 
L 2 



164 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE, 

forfeit all the advantages of vision ? — What 
sensibility to sweet sounds, do not the 
blind universally possess; How easily do 
thej^ acquire skill to educe ravishing melo- 
dy from almost every instrument of music? 
To be bliud from infancy, is, almost 
always, the same thing as to be born 
with divine genius for music : It is almost 
to be sure of getting a fortune by music, 
It renders a musical voice, all that is 
lovely and rapture-giving to the mind. 
Had Jean Jacques Rousseau been blind ; 
— -he would never have experienced that 
disappointment of enraptured expectation 
at the Charity-School at Venice, which he 
describes in his Confessions. He heard the 
young girls sing, without having opportu- 
nity to see their faces:. The voices, the 
song, were divine : His soul was ravished : 
He could not imagine but that their forms 
must be heavenly as their voices : He was 
an age gone in the wildest delirium of love: 
Admitted to see them — he found that one 
was lame, another scarred with the small 
pox, a third blind of an eye, a fourth 
crooked like an S, a fifth with a humped 



PERSONAL COMFORTS, I(5S 

back and a protuberant breast: He was 
shocked beyond expression: He returned 
home in horror, as if he had seen some- 
thing unnatural: Nor could he, ever after, 
drive from his mind, the ugly, unpleasant 
remembrance: — He would ten times rather 
have wanted his eyes for that bout, than 
have been so provokingly undeceived by 
them! — The memory is usually much im- 
proved by the want of sight, The im- 
pressions which it receives are fixed deep. 
They are not lost amidst that tumult of 
perceptions which embarrasses the mind 
which has the benefit of sight. They are 
more simply and intimately connected, one 
with another. They are more endeared to 
the fancy and the feelings, than if the di- 
versity of perceptions for these to work 
upon, were greater. A blind person re- 
members with a tenacity of recollection, 
and a minuteness of circumstances, which 
can seldom be rivalled by the memory of 
one that sees. There is, very often, some- 
thing most interestingly tender, affection- 
ate, ingenuous, and pensive, in the temper 
and character of blind men, which gives 
l 3 



166 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

them a peculiar hold on the affections of 
a parent, friend, or mistress. It rarely 
happens,, that a blind man is not much a 
favourite among the women of his own 
degree, I have known more than one or 
two such, whom the loveliest woman of 
their acquaintance preferred to crowds of 
lovers in all other respects the most en- 
gaging. You know I lived at Edinburgh, 
in the house of the late amiable Dr. Thomas 
Blacklock: And it was not -only on my 
affections, but on tbtose of almost every 
intelligent person who came much about 
him, that the sweetness of his temper, the 
gentleness of his manners, the ardent be- 
nignity of his heart, his simple, artless, 
enlightened rectitude, the variety of his 
learning and talents, the vivacity of his 
fancy, the innocent gaiety of his conver- 
sation, and the unaffected enthusiasm and 
rapture of his piety, acted with the force 
of an irresistible spell to bewitch affection, 
and fix the tenderest friendship. Never 
man was more tenderly beloved by his 
friends: Never friend, more faithful or 
affectionate to those whose kindness his 



PERSONAL COMFOUTS. 1(57 

good qualities had engaged. The recol- 
lection of Blacklock brings it into my 
mind to remark — how blindness has power 
to triumph over all its natural disadvan- 
tages, even in regard to the Poetrv of 
visible objects! The powers of his me- 
mory were evinced in the diversity of his 
erudition, and in his wonderful command 
of the language both of poetry a ad of 
-prose-eloquence. Now, in both his poetrv 
and his prose, he would introduce, with 
propriety, and even with picturesque ener- 
gy, images and colours of local descrip- 
tion, of which he could have no represen- 
tatives in his fancy, and which he could 
know only as a sort of mysterious signs, 
pleasing by their association with words 
and w T ith thoughts otherwise agreeable. 
Very extraordinary must have been the 
power of mind, that could so combine 
the elements of local description, without 
bavins; had visual knowledge of them. — 
The blindness is enviable, that derives from 
necessity, such an improvement of the hu- 
man powers. In truth I can scarce,, at this 
moment, recollect to have known a blind 
l4 



[US COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

man that had not something extraordinary 
about him, — that was not, in fact, a man 
of genius. Go to the Institutions for the 
education of the Indigent Blind — you shall 
he astonished at the ingenuity of their 
manufactures ! I remember, as the friend 
and frequent visitor of Blacklock, the 
blind Dr. Mo yes, who still lives in the 
enjoyment of a competent fortune which 
he acquired, as a Lecturer in Experimental 
Philosophy! Moves could dress his own 
hair as handsomely as any hair-dresser : 
and he used to perform every other little 
personal service for himself, as neatly and 
readily as any one that had the perfect use 
of sight. — In truth, w r hen w r e particularly 
enquire into the case of the Blind, — one 
would almost thiuk, — that it is with the 
senses, as with pecuniary opulence or the 
grandeur of ambition, — and that by the 
want of sight as bv the want of either 
of those envied advantages, — one is only 
put so much the more in the way to -dis- 
-tinguish one's self by genuine virtue, abi- 
lity, and those other excellencies whiefa 
prove the true springs of comfort! — One 






PERSONAL COMFORTS. l6§ 

thins: more, the remembrance of Black- 
lock brings it into mv mind to add. Pri- 

o at 

ration of the Sight of external things, 
puts one's knowledge of present things, 
so much upon a level with that knowledge 
by faith alone which we have of the future 
joys and sufferings of Christianity, that a 
Blind Man is likely to be a much more 
lively and sincere believer, than are those 
who see. It was remarkably so with 
Blacklock, He thought of Heaven with 
almost as much vivacity of apprehension, 
as of the things of this sublunary world 
and of social life. I witnessed his conduct, 
at the near approach of his last hour, He 
died of an inflammatory fever, after a short 
illness. He met death, actually, with the 
serenity, chearfulness, and even joy of a 
person emancipated from Trench's dungeon 
at Spandau, into sudden liberty, enjoy- 
ment, and honour! — But, one more ad- 
vantage of Blindness — and I have done.— 
Have you ever witnessed the new feelings 
of a person blind from his birth, when, by 
surgical aid, the perceptions of light were 
let suddenly in upon his sensorium ? \ou 



170 COMFORTS OF HUMAN EltfK. 

have, at least, all, read Cheselden's famous 
description of the indications by which 
a young man whose eyes he couched, made 
known his first sensations and emotions after 
the new light was let in upon him. To 
a( aire a new science; to make one's self 
mas of a new language, rich in amuse- 
ment and instruction; to see a scene of 
squalid desolation, suddenly clothed with 
fertility and beauty ; to grasp any important 
truth which one has long anxiously sought 
without success ; to find an host of gather- 
ing difficulties vanish, even as the clouds 
are dissipated by a thunder-storm; gives 
to the mind a high rapture of new delight. 
But, it is nothing that even these can s;ive, 
in comparison with that new world which 
opens on the blind man when new day is 
poured suddenly upon his eyeballs. Has 
he become previously weary of the same- 
ness of life ? The novelty of existence, fresh 
even as at the hour of his birth, is suddenly 
renovated to him. His pleasure is a sort of 
resemblance and anticipation of that which 
awaits the saints in passing from earth to 
He receives a profusion of new 



PERSONAL eOMFOKTS, 1/1 

ideas: and every one of these becomes by 
its novelty, and by its association with the 
other ideas of sight, and with his former 
ideas derived both from Sight and from 
the other Senses, a source of j< y. 

Sen* Pray, quit this serious subject* 
Your conversation, in expatiating upon it, 
becomes too melancholy and too solemnly 
sentimental. The discussion is, indeed, 
not un pleasing. But, the pleasure is of that 
sober, affecting cast, which diffuses itself 
over the mind, in sneaking of a departed 
friend fo* whose loss we have ceased to 
sorrow with agony, though we still re- 
member his virtues and his kindness with 
fond regret ! 

(C. 4.) 

Merry. What think you of the Comfort 
of Personal Ugliness : 

Tes. Oh ! pray, let me know it: I could 
never yet get much in love with this un- 
lucky phiz of mine. And though Mrs. 
Testy's good-nature was, at length, enticed 
to endure it; I can assure you that she 
shunned me. in the beginning of mv court- 
ship, as if I had been the very monster of 



172 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

the tale of Beauty and the Beast, or even 
the Bull of Beverland himself! 

Merry. Ha! ha! ha! Mr. Testy! Should 
we even allow you the merit of deserving 
to become President of the Ugly Club; it 
will be impossible to pity you in your ug- 
liness. You know how to make merry with 
it. I'll warrant, you cannot see your own 
features in a mirrour, without laughing. 
You, if you chose, might describe, better 
than any one, the Comforts of being 

Tes. Nay, Mr. Merryfellow, be as- 
sured, those Comforts cannot be bej^ond 
the range of your own experience. You, 
at least, have not personal beauty to ren- 
der you uncomfortable. Not a Lady of 
your acquaintance, will so far flatter you, 
as to say that you have. So, proceed ! 
muster before us the Comforts of Ugli- 
ness ! 

Merry. Why! Is it not a Comfort to 
be free from all the petty solicitudes and 
toils which the consciousness of personal 
beauty subjects us to ? To brush the teeth 
twenty times a day; to comb the eye r 
brows as often ; to watch perpetually the 



PERSONAL COMFORTS. l?^ 

changes in the lustre of the eyes, and the 
Sittings of colour in the complexion — what 
puny, unmanly cares, these? — and yet, how 
apt they are to engross the mind of a pretty 
master-miss-youth, — and even to keep 
it, continually, in. a fret? — An ugly fellow 
is free from all these cares. He thinks of 
his person as little as possible : and, when 
he does take any pains with it — that is 
merely for the sake of indispensible clean- 
liness and secret Comfort. — Beautiful 
faces are very often unmeaning; and 
fine persons, deficient in agility, and in 
active vigour. It is ugliness, or some- 
thing very near to ugliness, that is the 
most compatible with strong, manly ex- 
pression in a countenance : and it is the 
thickset, broad, coarse form that is usually 
the most remarkable for active strength. 
Personal elegance and beauty are flowers 
which very quickly fade : and the memory of 
them is a pain to all the subsequent life of 
him who has lost them. The fading of ugli- 
ness is but the withering of a thistle, the de- 
cay of a nettle, the crushing of a toadstool, 
the extirpation of a mugzcort, the cutting 



174 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

down of aknarled birch or crab-thorn. He, 
to whom this change comes, joys in it : He 
feels, for the moment, as if he were dropping 
a mask, which he had sometimes felt awk- 
wardly reluctant to wear before company. 
He has the pleasure to find, as he grows 
older, that the difference between the ugly 
face and the handsome one, is, every day 
diminished. If he was weak enough to be 
mortified in thinking of his ugliness; he is 
happy to find its disadvantages to vanish 
gradually. Was he little concerned about 
the cast of his phiz ? He can, however, 
suffer no uneasiness on account of any effect 
of growing years upon it, unless it become, 
by age, less powerfully comic. It is cu- 
rious to observe, though the observation 
be one often made, that an ugly face is 
very generally the sign hung out over a 
witty humorous mind. It suggests innu- 
merable exhilarating witticisms to the 
wearer himself: and it is a cause of wit to 
others, even if the wearer should make 
nothing of it. It is so much the genuine 
guise of humour, that he, whom nature has 
favoured with it, cannot more easily resist 



PERSONAL COMFORTS, 1J5 

temptations to humour when they come 
before him, than could the Gat, in the 
Fairy Tale, while a fine lady, resist her old 
appetite for mousing when a mouse came 
in her way. There is scarce a merry, 
shrewd, witty fellow, even in fictitious 
history, but has the honour of ugliness 
attributed to him. JEsop was, you know, 
a very ugly little Crouchback. Uglier still, 
was Socrates, not less a wit and a man of 
humour, than a philosopher. The heroes of 
Rabelais were eminent for personal ugli- 
ness. Sancho Panza, his master, and Ro- 
sinante were, in their several conditions, 
absolutely patterns of this interesting qua- 
lification. Hudibras and Ralpho are still 
more conspicuously ugly. FalstafT, Bar- 
dolph, Ancient Pistol, and almost every 
other character of wit and humour in the 
whole Drama of Shakspeare, are emi- 
nently ugly. Horace was a little punch of 
a fellow whose countenance had no beauty 
in it, but that it was ever shining with wit, 
good-fellowship, and good-humour. Scar- 
ron, the favourite wit of France, at one 
time, was one of the most deformed little 



176 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

figures that ever a lovely woman allowed 
herself to be matrimonially coupled to. 
On the English stage, it appears somef- 
thing out of nature, and therefore disgust- 
ing, for wit or humour to come from any- 
one that has not the garnish of ugliness 
to set it off, and make it go down. Wit, 
humour, and gaiety contribute so much to 
the charms of social converse, and are the 
springs of so large a proportion of all 
which is interesting in it, that I know not 
who would not purchase their advantages 
even at the expence of almost any imagina- 
ble diminution of personal charms. What 
amusement is there not to be derived from 
any thing peculiarly ugly about the Nose? 
Is your Nose excessively long? Comfort 
yourself with the reflexion, that you have 
fared as well as if you had been to the 
promontory of Noses. It is the proboscis 
of an elephant, an instrument of nice sen- 
sation, and a type of peculiar wisdom. It 
is the Siispensus Nasus which the Romans 
held to be so remarkable -an indication of 
acute delicacy in the perception of the 
ridiculous. 



PERSONAL COMFORTS. 1J$ 

Sen. Enough! Enough! Nil me pwni- 
tet hujus Nasi. \ou have satisfied me, 
that my nose is of the best of all possible 
figures. Sometimes, when in my walking 
meditations, I have struck it against a 
post, — or when I have secretly felt it pru- 
dent to suppress my resentment of imper- 
tinence lest an impudent short-nosed fellow 
should seize me by it,— I have suffered a 
wish to cross my mind that Nature had 
given me half an inch less of Nose. But, 
after hearing what you have just repre- 
sented, — I would not exchange Noses, — * 
no, not with eld Mr. Shandy himself! 

Tes. But, my short Nose ! Have you 
nothing to say in its favour r Persuade me, 
if you can, that it is the very pride of my 
existence, the charm of my life, the glory, 
the dial-cock of my countenance : 

Chear. Why, you know, Mr. Testy, 
that what is little is, always, esteemed to 
he smart and pretty. Almost all the words, 
in every language, which express remark- 
able diminutiveness, are expressive also of 
fondness or of merry satisfaction, A small 
hand, a little foot, a little mouth are 

M 



178 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

thought personal beauties—- why not like- 
wise, a little snubbed nose? The little fin- 
ger, the little toe, and every other organ 
of the body, remarkable for littleness, are 
particular favourites. In any dangers and 
hair-breadth escapes of the face, an humble 
nose like yours, is not much more exposed 
than your cheeks or your chin. You may 
twist and pinch, and pull it, and expose it 
to a thousand perils of soap and a furious 
adversary's gripe, without fearing lest it 
should be stretched out to deformity. A 
pimple, a wart, a polypus, by enlarging, 
only beautify it. It is ever brisk, alert, 
erect, and upon the qui vive.—It affords a 
shortened passage to the brain. It does 
not put you to the same expence for clean 
handkerchiefs, as if your nose were larger. 
And as it is a perfection in Nature, to accom- 
plish all her ends, with the smallest possi- 
ble waste of means; why should you not be 
delighted to find yourself adorned with a 
true natural Nose, at so small an expendi- 
ture of flesh and blood ? Besides, if, with 
a nose such as vours, a man should fall 
into a misfortune not to be remedied with- 



PERSONAL COMFORTS* 179 

out the. aid of Taliacotius's art, and of a 
fresh steak from a living porter's bum; — 
a smaller steak will be sufficient, — and there 
is less danger of the surgeon's miscarriage 
in the operation, — than if it was a nose 
as large as a Phallus-figured Spring Pin- 
cushion of pink silk, that was to be restored ! 
Such noses as yours. Sir, are w r ell known 
to have been much admired amons; the 
Romans, as a sure proof that the wearer 
was a person of shrewd discernment, and 
of quick, lively, sarcastic wit. You re- 
member the acutis narihus of Horace. 

Sen. But, for all this, you cannot deny, 
Gentlemen, that all the world are perpe- 
tually anxious to be as little Ugly as pos- 
sible? 

Merry. Quite the contrary ! All man- 
kind, aye and women, too, are in per- 
petual toil to render themselves as Ugly 
as possible. We eat, to fatten our bellies 
out of all proportion ; and to swell our 
features to the appearances of pig's cheeks 
and bull's faces. Do we not drink to render 
our bodies dropsical, our eyes dead in the 
sockets, our noses fiery, our cheeks pallid 
M 2 



180 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

and flaccid as a bit of spoiled tripe moist- 
ened in water ^ — and yet starred with pim- 
ples? We change the modes of cutting 
and dressing our hair, and the fashions of 
our wigs,, twenty times— almost within the 
year : and at every change,, we ingeni- 
ously contrive that the new mode shall be, 
if possible, more at war with natural grace 
and beauty, than that which it has super- 
seded. We court the favours of Mercury 
and Venus, — not for the sake of the rap- 
tures of love, or the brisk animation of 
wit,— but to taint the breath, to sap the 
nose, to blear the eye, to exchange the hair 
for a Corona Veneris, and for skeleton bald- 
ness, to wither and crumble down the 
bones, to cover the skin with blotches and 
sores, to prepare our living carcases for 
all the tortures and the deformity of le- 
prosy, gout, and rheum ! — What but an 
invincible passion for Ugliness, could en- 
gage us in such a conduct as this? — 

And the Women ! — Their paint, their 
patches, and their rings, — what are these 
but the paraphernalia of Ugliness ? They 
are never easy, till the teeth which Nature 



T'EXtSONAL COMFORTS. IS t 

gives are rotten in their mouths, or 
torn, fresh and sound, from the jaw : — 
and then they fill their cheeks with the 
worst substitutes, animal or mineral, 
which are to be found, — carrying about as 
much dead and putrefying matter within 
their living lips as possible. They pull 
down their ears with rings, for fear that 
those naturally charming ornaments of the 
head should produce their proper effect* 
They wear their hair in any fashion but 
that which is natural, simple, and becom- 
ing. Now with dirt, and now with acrid 
corrosive washes to remove it, — they con- 
trive to parch and shrivel their skins, 
and to wither their bloom, long before 
the natural term of decay. They now 
paint their cheeks with rouge, and now 
with ratifia ; in both instances, only to 
make the expression of the features, fierce 
or stupid. They expose their elbows, till 
these acquire the dusky red colour of an 
unboiled lobster's back. They evince no 
care to accommodate fashions in dress to 
their respective figures, years, and com- 
plexions : Each female adopts, for herself* 

M o 



1S2 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

the common fashion, so blindly, and so 
implicitly, as to demonstrate, that solici- 
tude to set off or improve her beauty has 
not any thing to do in the affair. The men, 
too, are quite of the same mind, as to fe- 
male beauty and ugliness. The beauties are 
but playthings of an hour, admired, be- 
loved, caressed but by the inexperienced and 
the fickle. But the Ugly are they who esta- 
blish the surest dominion over men's hearts. 
You shall scarce find an uxorious husband, 
a Jerry Sneak, but has a wife of distinguished 
ugliness; or, among the more licentious, 
a kind keeper, the slave of his female com- 
panion, whose mistress is not ugly to a 
miracle. — It is not only in society highly 
civilized and refined, that the rage is so 
much more for Ugliness than for beauty. 
The savage, the barbarian, the simple 
peasant have, all, the same passion for 
Ugliness in themselves and others. How 
do savages squeeze the heads of their new- 
born infants, and distort their legs, and 
paint and mangle their countenances to as- 
pects of hidecusness ? Barbarians, equally 
ambitious to be ugly, disfigure themselves 



PERSONAL COMFORTS. 1&3 

by dirtiness, and by awkward, inconve- 
nient gorgeousness of apparel, if they do 
not absolutely hack their faces and maim 
their limbs for Uglinesses sake. There is 
in human nature, thus, throughout all its 
conditions, an aversion for beauty, and a 
passion for the opposite quality, which 
fully prove, that eminent Ugliness cannot 
but be to its possessor, one of the truest 
Comforts. Even our peasantry, of the 
most sequestered parts of the country, dis- 
cover the same passion as others to dis- 
figure themselves. 

Tes. Well! You have said enough to 
reconcile me to my physiognomy, — if I 
could avoid looking in a glass when I shave 
myself — or if Mrs. Test) 7 did not now and 
then, make me to bethink myself of it, by 
epithets of contempt, 

(C. 5.) 

Sen. Disease? Alas! You can never 
make that, in any of its forms, to appear 
a source of Comfort? 

Chcar. Why, if Disease be not abso- 
lutely a source of Comfort— it approaches, 
M 4 



JS4 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

in many instances, very near to that. 
There are occasions upon which the pangs 
of a diseased body have the effect to 
administer relief to a disturbed mind. 
Men have found a fit of the gout or the 
tooth-ach to operate as a joyful deliverance 
from an ennui, a tedium of existence, 
from the misery of which they w r ere almost 
ready to fly to suicide. Under the hor- 
ror of sudden and severe calamity, a friend 
of mine has told me, that he once found 
relief in what would, otherwise, have been 
the tortures of rheumatism. The sensa- 
tions of a convalescent from a putrid or 
inflammatory fever, are so pleasing, and 
give such an idea of the renovation of ex- 
istence with all the joys it is susceptible of, 
that one whose feelings were not before 
lively, would, undoubtedly, rather have 
had the fever, than want that new vivacity 
in all his energies of mind and body, which 
the consequences of the fever, bestow. — 
The diseases of children are serviceable, to 
moderate the impatience of their tempers, 
and to teach them compassion, fortitude, 
prudence, and patience. There is an in- 






PERSONAL COMFORTS. 185 

terchange of mutual tenderness between 
the person afflicted with disease, and those 
who nurse his illness, that often so much 
more than compensates for the pain and 
anxiety of the indisposition, as to change 
it into a Comfort. What poet is it, who 
reflects with complacency, that he had not 
- c known the madness of superfluous health®" 
— He had good reason so to reflect. Strong, 
unbroken health, betrays those who enjoy 
it, into excesses, and follies by which it 
becomes, often, a mischief, instead of a 
blessing. Sickliness is the nurse of huma- 
nity and of wisdom. It has been remarked, 
a thousand times, that they who are weak 
in health,- — and are, therefore, obliged to 
avoid robust exercise, careless exposure to 
natural accidents, and every excess in con- 
vivial or sensual enjoyment, — usually live 
longer, and have more true enjoyment of 
existence, than those whom the bounty of 
nature tempts to imagine their constitu- 
tions too strong to be injured by any thing 
they themselves can do, to hurt them. 
We never learn the true secret of enjoy- 
ment, ^till we are taught it by Disease, 



186 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

There is no possibility of subduing man by 
other means, to that prudence in the manage- 
ment of health, and the pursuit of pleasure, 
without which we can have no true Com- 
fort in life. — What are our truest Comforts 
in mortal existence ? Are they not those 
which w r e call the Domestic Ones? But, 
man, nor woman neither, — never settles to 
the study and relish of Domestic Comforts, 
—till the wild oats are sown — till the hey- 
day of the blood is past— till he has re- 
ceived the frequent lessons of indisposition 
and disease. These are the Guides to whose 
care Nature commits him, to be by them 
conducted to the best happiness which is, 
in this world, within his reach. Besides, 
men seem to court Disease with one gene- 
ral consent. They abuse health with as 
much zeal and perseverance, as if it were 
an invaluable prize, to attain Disease. 
They use the means to get the gout, the 
stone, the rheum, with as active and steady 
diligence, as if those were their most inte- 
resting objects of pursuit. You can never 
persuade any man, that the same means 
will ruin his Constitution which have ruined 



PERSONAL COMFORTS, 187 

to death those of others, till he is actually 
in the gripe of the Disease which he pre- 
tended to despise while he was running 
upon it. Invent certain cures for any Dis- 
eases, or preventives — such as is Vaccina- 
tion for the Small-Pox; — you shall find it 
almost impossible to persuade the world, 
within any reasonable time, to adopt them I 
Let Quacks, on the other hand, propose 
remedies, of the efficacy of which there 
can be little or no expectation: — All men 
shall contend— who to be the first to give 
his money for them, — and to trifle with the 
use of them. It should seem— as if men hated 
firm and secure health, — and as if they 
found a singular charm in the suspense and 
solicitudes pi a condition in perpetual un- 
certainty between health and illness. — 
When is a lovely woman so truly lovely, 
as when in the flushed delicacy of feverish 
indisposition, and in the first softness of 
her convalescence from it ? — Where Dis- 
ease has- not exalted the genius, refined the 
feelings, and given its lessons of wisdom, 
— it is seldom that man attains to the exe- 
cution of any thing admirably great, — • 



188 COMFORTS OP HUMAN MFB. 

Scarce a man of Genius has distinguished 
himself in any of the Arts particularly 
depending on the imagination, but had 
known much of indisposition and disease. 
How many of the best efforts of human 
ingenuity do we owe to the Gout ? It is, I 
think, Jean Jacques Rousseau, that men- 
tions the musical dreams which he had 
when he was almost in the delirium of a 
fever, as absolutely divine in comparison 
with any thing of which his waking genius 
was, in full health, capable! — Take Dis-. 
ease at once out of the world, with the 
means used to guard against it, with those 
persons whose profession is to live by it, 
with those things in our arts, manners, 
laws, trade, and manufactures, which 
have a respect to it— how little will there 
remain, to distinguish man from the brutes, 
or to render the affairs of social life at all 
interesting? Disease, too, has many pri- 
vileges. The sickly child is ever the fa- 
vourite of its mother, who, the more 
trouble and solicitude it gives, feels it to 
be so much the more endeared to her. We 
build palaces for the reception of such o«f 



PERSONAL COMFORTS. 1S9 

our sick,, as are unable to find the neces- 
sary means of relief for themselves. In 
sickness, the mind is admitted to a con- 
verse with Heaven, to which it can, rarely, 
in full health, exalt itself — a converse which 
both elevates and refines the sentiments, 
while it gives a Comfort which nothing 
else in this world, can bestow ! 

(C. 6.) 

Sen. I confess, that you have explained 
certain interesting advantages to be found 
in Sickness. You might, no doubt, enu- 
merate a multitude of alleviations, of 
which its pain and melancholy are suscep- 
tible. But, — what of Death ? 

Chear. Why, cannot you be satisfied 
with the Epicure's consolation? — " I have 
" had my share of the good things of this 
ki life; and, now I care not though I be- 
" gone from it." It is time for the cater- 
pillar to change its form, and soar aloft on 
new wino;s ! — Who would chuse to live to 
the imbecility, the odiousness, and the. 
satiety of sublunary existence which have 
been attributed to a Struldbrugg? Death, 



190 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE* 

— if not hastened by our own folly, — if not 
embittered by our consciousness of guilt, — 
seldom affects with agonies so severe, as 
many of those which have been experi- 
enced, and triumphantly endured in the 
progress of life. How many rush to it, 
voluntarily! How many boldly face it, in 
the field for a shilling a day ! How many 
lay themselves placidly down in their beds, 
to receive it, as a kind and welcome friend? 
Since novelty and truth are so much the 
very food and sustenance of our intellec- 
tual powers; does not the change of Death 
promise of those, what must compensate 
ten thousand times for any agonies with 
which it may be accompanied? 

Tes, I am not unwilling to receive your 
Consolations of Death. But, the subject 
is too austere for the general tenor of our 
present conversation. Better leave it with 
Drelincourt! 

Merry. Yes! let us talk of those petty 
Comforts, which, though each be, in it- 
self, trivial, yet, by their frequent recur- 
rence, become highly important to the 
general happiness of life. 



PERSONAL COMFORTS. JQl 

(C. 7.) 

Tes. Well ! what say you to the Com- 
fort, for " a Lad\- in sewing, suddenly to 
(e prick her finger, with the needle, to the 
*? bone:" 

Merry. Oh! she then shares the glories 
of that martyr to spinster-virtues, Queen 
Elizabeth's maid of honour, who died by 
the prick of a needle, and whose monu- 
ment is the pride of Westminster Abbey ! 
It awakens the Lady's attention, season- 
ably, to the work upon which she is busy. 
It affords her a good occasion to relax 
from such unceasing industry with her 
needle, if she began to be tired of it, and 
yet was ashamed to leave off! It is a 
seasonable and convenient blood letting, — 
if the circulation had begun, as often hap- 
pens in sewing, to be impeded by the con- 
tinual pressure on the tip of that finger ! 
It presents an opportunity for that associa- 
tion of lau^hino; and crying, both tran- 
sient and momentary, which makes up so 
much of the gayest comedy and farce of 
Vv hat fair sempstress will, now T , deny, 



IQ2 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

that, to wound her finger with her needle, 
is a Comfort r 

Tes. u Hiccupping ? " 

(C. 8.) 

Merry. A slight convulsive motion of 
the throat, so odd in its sensations and ap- 
pearances, and so easily conquered, that 
it can excite nothing but gaiety ! 

(C. 3.) 

Tes. (C A pair of tight boots so fastened 
€€ on your legs by wetness, that it becomes 
<c next to impossible to pull them off?" 

Merry. An excellent opportunity to 
atchieve the praise of the difficulti sur- 
montte! A summons to an exercise of 
address, force, patience, and persever- 
ance, for your own relief, which promises 
you an improvement in these qualities, 
that shall give you, joy and pride in all 
your toil and awkward endurance ! Besides, 
you may thus have occasion to eat your 
dinner or toy with your mistress, one boot 
on, another off, with all the grace of the 
heroic prince in the Rehearsal ! 



PERSONAL COMFORTS. 193 

Sen. Very well ! The Comfort you sug- 
gest is sufficiently on a level with the 
Misery which some have persuaded them- 
selves, that they could not but suffer even 
from an incident so slight as this.— But, 
the night advances : the moon sinks behind 
a cloud : the damps of the evening, make 
themselves very sensible to my feelings. 
Let us return to the House; and retire to 
rest ! 

Tes. It is time.-— Sleep is the most de- 
sirable Comfort we can now court, 



194 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE, 



DIALOGUE THE SEVENTH. 

COMFORTS OF SOCIAL LIFE. 



Merryfellow, Testy, Sensitive, and ChearfuL 



Scene — Merryfellow's Chambers in 
the Temple. 

Testy. 

ImR. Merryfellow, your Chambers are 
commodious and elegant. There was no 
occasion for the apology with which you 
accompanied your invitation — as if you 
had been asking us to drink a glass of wine 
in an unfurnished cell, or in a garret. 

Sen. Crown-Office-Row is, certainly, 
one of the most agreeable scenes of resi- 
dence in the Temple, or even in all Lon- 
don and Westminster. The Garden, here^ 



COMFORTS OF SOCIAL LIFE. 195 

immediately on the foreground,— the ex- 
panse of the river, and the incessant acti- 
vity of which it is the scene,— the busy 
manufactures on the opposite side, — and, 
in the distance, the rising heights of the 
Surrey Hills, — compose a Summer pros- 
pect the most lively and interesting! 

Chear. One turns the eyes with plea- 
sure westward, to Westminster-Bridge, 
Mill- Bank, the Houses of Parliament, the 
Abbey, and the objects which offer them- 
selves to notice, along that part of the 
river's winding course ! 

Merry. Eastward, the view is to my 
mind not disagreeable — if one have but a 
taste for the scenery of a river where 
commerce and population have long sup- 
planted rural beauty. What think you of 
Blackfriars Bridge — of the s;rove of masts 
in the distance beyond, — of the mass, the 
diversity, the animation of those objects, 
as far as the eye can stretch its vi<:% down 
the course of the stream ? 

Sen. Most interesting, all ! The tri- 
umphs of human Art and Industry ! The 
causes and the consequences of that civi- 
is 2 



1Q& COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

lization and refinement which proceed 
from the union of men in society. 

Tes. Well! are you and Chearful, now 
in the mind to oppose your notions of the 
Comforts of Social Life to our Sighs 
and Groans over its Miseries? 

Merry. Oh ! by all means. 

(C. 1.) 

Even the most misanthropical Solitude 
derives from Social Life,, that charm 
which the Man-hater who retires there, at 
first fancies himself to find in it. He has 
no enjoyment but in reflecting, with min- 
gled tenderness and sulkiness, on the soci- 
ety he has quitted. He avails himself of 
his acquaintance with the arts and learning 
of society. He substitutes books for men ; 
and has, in those, a company of the most 
respectable associates, who talk their best, 
and yet hold themselves readv to come and 
go implicitly at his command. He cannot 
even curse the mistress who has jilted or 
the friend that has betrayed him, without 
a reference of his sentiments to social life. 
'Never was any thing happier, in the deli- 



COMFORTS OF SOCIAL LI72. W7 

neation of human manners, than Johnson, 
in describing his Hermit, in the Prince of 

Abyssinia, as impatient, after a certain 
time, of his favourite solitude, and about 
to return the next day, into society. I could 
wager you, that even Simon Stylites, when 
he stood year after year, without change 
of posture, on a solitary pillar, thought 
of human society full as much as of Hea- 
ven, in that strange seclusion. Put the 
fiercest misanthrope alive into solitary 
confinement — you shall rind him court the 
familiarity of a mouse, a rat, or a spider, 
and study to win the kindness of such crea- 
tures — precisely because he finds them to 
be not unsusceptible of some of the most 
endearing social sentiments of human na- 
ture. — The first Comfort of Social Life- 
is, to know that even Solitude would, — in 
no circumstances, and to no imaginable 
humour of human character, — have charms, 
without a continual reference to Society. 

(C. 2.) 

Chear. How very soon an infant 
learns to take delight in Society ! His 
N 3 



If)8 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE, 

pleasure at sight of his mother or his nursey 
is almost the first sentiment that becomes 
habitual in his mind, — 

•* Incipe, parve puer, risu cognoscere matrem," — 

Says Virgil, with admirable beauty and 
accuracy of observation. Whether he cry 
at a stranger's approach ; or upon occasions 
of alarm, cling, " still close and closer to 
the mother's breast:" — his dependence 
upon Society, and his sense of its power 
to Comfort, are alike displayed. — As his 
mind expands, he gains increased know- 
ledge and happiness, chiefly by becoming 
still more and more the creature of Soci- 
ety. He learns little of unintelligent na- 
ture, in comparison with what he learns 
of men. He personifies, in his mind, all 
Nature, to give it the interesting power of 
human Society to him. He builds mimic 
houses; and, in fancy, puts families of 
human inhabitants in them. He perhaps 
fancies himself at the head of a little army, 
and imagines the presence of a rival host 
opposed to that which he leads. He rea- 
dily embraces those tales of vulgar super- 
stition which people all nature with unseen 



1 



COMFORTS OF SOCIAL LIFE, 199 

myriads of fairies, ghosts, good angels, and 
evil spirits. He courts with eagerness the 
friendship of as many other persons, young 
and old, as he can get access to. He seems 
not even to live but in converse with be- 
ings of intelligence and affections like his 
own. He fondles vounor animals— birds, 
lambs, calves, dogs, ponies, cats, even 
trouts, and mice — and strives to render 
them tame, and to win their attachment — ■ 
all for the sake only of social qualities like 
those of men, which he discovers or fan- 
cies himself to discover in them. Can 
there be proofs more unequivocal, that 
social existence is the very basis of all the 
Comforts of which it is within the fate of 
human beings to taste? 

(C. 3.) 

Sen. How great the Comforts of Arti- 
ficial Education! They are Comforts 
peculiar to Society; and the most perfect 
in its most refined state. — The mother 
who, if she do not suckle her child, yet 
lives with the infant, and watches over it, 
as constantly as possible, enjoys a felicity 
in this exercise of affection, which nothing 
N 4 



200 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE* 

out of Society could have communicated. 
The infant, in attaching itself still more 
and more to its mother and its nurse, 
learns to know the charm of natural affec- 
tion ; and has, thus, the first germ planted 
in its breast, of all those joys which the 
gentle and tender affections are to give 
throughout life. The diversities of Soci- 
ety, as they present themselves, in the 
progress of Education, still more and 
more, to the opening mind, engage and 
gratify curiosity ; and while they invigo- 
rate and enrich the mind, prove to it, so 
many springs of perpetual Comfort. The 
pleasure which the novelties of physical 
nature yield to the juvenile observer, is 
nothing, absolutely nothing, in comparison 
with that which he finds in contemplating 
those diversities of human fortune and 
character which are, only in social life, 
presented to him. — The restraints which 
Artificial Education imposes, are among its- 
Comforts. They are the springs of many 
a Comfort. They prevent the boy from 
knowing that satiety of free idleness and 
of amusement which would destroy the 
charai of them for ever. They form -him 



COMFORTS OF SOCIAL LIFE. £01 

to a steadiness of design and of applica- 
tion^ io which he is to owe much of tb* 4 
most substantial happiness of his future 
life. They gradually endow him with 
conscious energies of patience, fortitude, 
and vivid attention, by which he finds 
himself formed to manly force and useful- 
ness of character. The sports, the most 
pleasing, of the age of artificial education, 
are, all, such as derive their charm from 
being social; and give, every one, the 
liveliest delight. Emulation, in tasks of 
learning, and in sports, is the occasion of 
almost all the joyous fervid activity which 
the young, at this period display — but, it 
is a sentiment that, out of society, could 
never be experienced.— Even the vexations 
and unluck}' incidents which cross the boy, 
from time to time, amid his early lessons 
and diversions, are changed by the power of 
Society, into matters of gaiety. He takes 
a pride in bearing them with spirit, that 
he may not be despised for feebleness and 
timidity. He affects to laugh over them 
with his fellows: and the very attempt has 
almost power to render them subjects of 
irresistible merriment. The moment they 



202 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

have passed, they are forgotten, because 
the* bustle of juvenile amusement soon 
drives them away from the light and san- 
guine heart hitherto unpractised in the 
art of enhancing its miseries. They be- 
come, afterwards, with all the other events 
of our boyish years, subjects of agreeable 
recollection. The tasks of instruction, 
generally more or less enlivened by emula- 
tion and curiosity, come to please, every 
day more, by the knowledge and skill 
which we are conscious of deriving from 
them. These, with our amusements, and 
our confinement to the discharge of moral 
duties, our views of exterior nature, and , 
our voluntary study and imitation of hu- 
man example, compose the whole of our 
education. They have, all, the closest 
reference to Society. In the Season of 
Life when we are immediately busied in 
them, — they hold our fancy, memory, un- 
derstanding, senses, and passions, all in 
the liveliest play of happy activity. When 
that season is over, — and we turn from the 
tasks of education, and the boyish sports that 
diversified them, — to the business of civil 
life,— we find often our truest joy in recol- 



COMFORTS OF SOCIAL LIFE. £03 

looting them, and renewing them. We 
take a pleasure in meeting an old school- 
fellow, after many years separation, which 
is one of the liveliest the human heart is 
capable of. The hooks which we read at 
school, and at college, become the favour- 
ite companions of all our folio wing life : 
We read them, year after year, with fresh 
delight: And to have read many books 
of instruction and entertainment when one 
was very young, is, to have acquired al- 
most the richest of all treasures for future 
Comfort. We review, with social affec- 
tion, the scenes where our early sports 
were followed, and our early instruction 
received. Even in old as;e, to trv one of 
the Games in which we delighted when at 
school, will often give back almost all our 
boyish sprightliness and activity. — Such 
are the Comforts which the Education of 
Social Life bestows ! Are not these, suffi- 
cient to endear society, as the source of 
satisfaction, which, even alone, would leave 
no just reason to whine and murmur over 
life, as abandoned to almost unmixed mi- 
sery: 



204 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE, 
(C. 4.) 

Tes. But, what Comfort has a School- 
boy when he is called to his task from a 
game at " Dog and Hare/' or any similar 
diversion in which he is ensued with the 
keenest eagerness of spirits ? 

Merry. He has the benefit of being 
seasonably withdrawn from overheating 
himself. He derives from this, immedi- 
ate Comfort; though perhaps, he may not 
be over-sensible of it. And, it tends to 
preserve his health for future activity in 
the same and other sports. Had he been 
allowed to exhaust his force and ardour, 
all at once in the sport; — he would have 
been disgusted with it. But, being com- 
pelled to break away from it in the middle ; 
he will return to it, with augmented sa- 
tisfaction, the very first moment he can 
escape from his tasks. This secret was 
well known to the writer of Hudibras, 
who, to heighten the interest of the story 
of the Bear and Fiddle, took care, 
that it should break off in the middle. 
Jt was well known, also, to the Writers of 
Don Quixote and of Gil Bias, who so often 
interrupt the thread of a story, while the 



COMFORTS OF SOCIAL LIFE. 205 

reader's curiosity is in full gallop for the 
end of it; nor resume that thread, till af- 
ter a very considerable interval. Besides, 
the boy,, if of a sullen humour, can re- 
venge himself, very comfortably, on his 
master, by being very sulky over his les- 
son. If his temper be generous, manly, 
and sanguine ; he triumphs in a different 
way; and, endeavouring to master his task 
with rapidity, that it may return him to his 
sports; is insensibly warmed to an ardent 
delight in it, that more than makes amends 
for the lost pleasure of his out-of-doors 
diversion. 

(C. 5.) 

Sen. But, is it not, the extreme of 
misery to luckless boys and girls, u when 
u pedantic parents or teachers, with some 
<c smattering knowledge, but with not one 
(i grain of shrewd common sense, insist 
t€ upon making all their sports, lessons of 
(( profound reason and philosophy ; their 
(C cards, books of Geography and History; 
cc their flying of kites, experiments in 
" electricity ?" 



206 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

Chear. Thus unseasonably to harms* 
children with a language of abstract 
ideas, which their minds have not been 
before prepared to invent or entertain, 
is, indeed exceedingly foolish. But, it 
is seldom much an annoyance to the 
children. The ridicule of the attempt 
easily strikes their minds, and makes them 
find amusement in the absurd pains of the 
unskilful teacher. Sometimes, new ima- 
gery and new relations are brought thus 
into view, which may take the attention 
even of idle, waggish children. And, in 
this case, the reason is agreeably improved, 
and the inventive faculties are pushed into 
activity. When the pupil is not amused 
either in seriousness or in frolic; he has 
the Comfort of escaping, in fancy, from 
the scene ; and is, of course, not so much 
a sufferer as a gainer in amusement, by the 
annoying and unseasonable philosophy of 
his instructor. The only case in which he 
can be truly a loser by the matter, is, 
when, without due intelligence, he fancies, 
that he can enter into it; and becomes con 
amore, an unenlightened smatterer in 



COMFORTS OF SOCIAL LIFE. €07 

science, a mere Hocus Pocus dealer in 
experiments, the very fool of words, like 
his master. Oh ! how I have sometimes 
been impatient to break the heads of old 
fools, who were teizing children to death 
with the repetition of terms which they 
did not themselves understand, — and in 
regard to which the Children had no inter- 
mediate ideas by the aid of which to seize 
them, — as clear illustrations in philosophy ! 
Oh ! how I dislike a boy that is scarce 
sooner in breeches than he begins to figure 
as a parrot of pedantry or philosophy! — 

(C. 6.) 

Tes. " The teizings of a Dancing-Mas- 
" ter, insisting on a boy or a girl to turn 
" out the toes, to hold up the head, and 
" to beat time with the steps to the mu» 
« sic ?"— 

Merry. Oh! in this case, the impor- 
tance of the personage and of his instruc- 
tions, cannot fail of reconciling the little 
pupil to every injunction he gives ! Every 
lesson, however otherwise tejzing, is com- 



208 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

fortable as a preparation for the joys of a 
dancing-school ball. 



(C. 7.) 

Tes. " A raw young lad from a remote 
€Q country-school with jealous, delicate 
" feelings, but an entire stranger to the 
" ways of the world, — harrassed to death 
u by the waggish mischief of his compa- 
" nions at college ?" 

Sen. Ah ! that was my fate ! 

Chear. Ah ! and it was mine ! But, 
you know, how I triumphed over it ! 

Sen. Not I ! — I was too much occupied 
with my own distresses and chagrins, to 
waste a thought upon those of others. 

Chear. While the rogues, of whom I 
think Testy was one, did with you, as did 
the withered old man, in the Arabian Tale, 
who persuaded the traveller to take him 
upon his shoulders, then squeezed the 
luckless bearer, about the neck, almost to 
suffocation, and would not suffer him af- 
terwards to lay down his burthen, or to 
move, but as the rider pleased; — I, on 
the contrary, rather made myself merry 



COMFORTS OF SOCIAL LIFE. 209 

with the tricks directed against myself; 
and thus became able to baffle them 
all; and to retaliate them, with more 
than equal force, upon their authors. — The 
first attempts of our merry young friends 
were upon my dress. There they were 
successful. They persuaded me to crop 
my long queue, to comb my front hair 
over my eyes, to alter the cut of my whis- 
kers, to bedaub myself with oat-meal for 
hair-powder, to hang my head over the 
left shoulder, and to wear my boots and 
gaiters in a fashion incomparably ridicu- 
lous. I was unconscious of the ridicule; 
and thought, that I was thus rendered by 
my friends' kindness, a young sprig of 
fashion, even within the first ten days, 
after my arrival in Edinburgh. The Secret 
was quickly whispered round: And none 
of my fellows met me in the streets but 
with an ambiguous smile on his counte- 
nance, which was changed instantane- 
ously into bursting laughter. At last, 
the ridicule was too strong to escape even 
my own notice. 1 corrected what was the 
most extravagant in my dress; and to the 
o 



210 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

essential benefit of my studies, gave up all 
pretensions to fashion. I could not, for 
many months after, hold up my head in 
the presence of any one of those before 
whom I had begun to strut as a beau. 
But, the authors of my shame, failed not 
to distinguish me by the appellation of 
Beau Chearful, for the rest of the winter. 
— Those same lads of humour were never 
as:ain able to ensnare me into anv similar 

O mi 

folly. But, I was assailed by others who 
conceived, that merriment might be ex- 
tracted, in a different way, out of my in- 
genuous simplicity. They misinformed 
me, of purpose, in regard to the wishes of 
the professors and the rules of the college. 
They excited me to write essays of both 
poetry and prose on occasions absurdly 
ridiculous. They engaged me in laughable 
contests of literary emulation with others 
who were equally butts of their mis- 
chievous humour. Nay, I remember, I was 
once silly enough to allow myself to be per- 
suaded to try the Laputan method of mas- 
tering a difficult proposition in Euclid — to 
reduce the leaf of my book that contained 



COMFORTS OF SOCIAL LIFE. 211 

it, to a powder, and to swallow it in a 
glass of water, on a morning, fasting. At 
another time, I was enticed to believe; 
that, in the neighbourhood of London, 
somewhere, and on the banks of the 
Thames, a young man was wanted to re- 
side seven years in the solitude of a her- 
mitage 'well-stored with books; arid that 
his reward, at the end of that time, was 
to be, certain introduction to a career of 
rapid advancement to the highest offices in 
the Church or in the State. The offer was 
just to my wishes. I was preparing to set 
out to present myself as a Candidate for 
the situation, when the affair came to the 
ears of one of the Professors, whose sea- 
sonable advice interrupted the progress of 
this adventure. 

But, I was more diverted and instructed, 
than chagrined, by those errors of abused 
simplicity, and by the ridicule they ex- 
posed me to. While I was the dupe of 
the mischievous artifice, you may be sure 
I suffered no pain from it. When I found 
ft out to be ah imposture practised on my 
simplicity; the pain of the discovery w^ 
o 2 



212 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE, 

suppressed by the satisfaction I felt, that I 
had not been later in making it. The 
lessons which mischievous humour and ri- 
dicule thus gave, were deep impressed 
upon my mind, and contributed the most 
essentially to its improvement in common 
sense. That momentary offence which 1 
could not but feel with the authors of my 
disgrace, was effaced from my mind, the 
instant they assured me, it was all a harm- 
less joke, such as none could have a right 
to be offended with. Yet, upon reflexion, 
I secretly discovered so much mare of 
wanton malignity, than of honest merri- 
ment in the joke, that I resolved never in 
life, to sport so, myself, with the ingenu- 
ous feelings of others. My emulation, too r 
was roused by the praise of cleverness 
which I heard bestowed on the wags who 
had so outwitted me. I resolved to keep 
upon my guard ; and, whenever they should 
assail me again, to shew myself, if pos- 
sible, more than a match for them at their 
own weapons. I succeeded in all. And 
you will not, 1 think, deny, that, so suc- 
ceeding, I had much more comfort than 



COMFORTS OF SOCIAL LIFE. <2\3 

vexation , in the tricks the wags played off 
against me. 

Se?i. Would, that I had been equally 
fortunate ! But, our friend Testy, then the 
very chief of the wags you mention, took 
a particular fancy for me, fastened himself 
upon me, and, under pretence of being 
my protector against mischievous tricks, 
-contrived to drop a sort of slow poison 
into every nipperkin of sweets that Nature 
or Society held out to me. — But, our late 
conversations have restored me to mvself. 
And, I forgive him. 

Tes. It is true that I took delight, when 
a stripling at college, in such pranks of 
trivial mischief, as you, Chearful, have 
described. Equally true is it, that I first 
cultivated Sensitive's friendship, of pur- 
pose to make him, by the tenderness and 
despondency of his feelings, the frequent 
butt of my own wit and ironical humour. — 
But, to confess the truth, I have since paid 
loo dear, a thousand times, for whatever 
satisfaction I had in betraying my simpler 
fellow-students into ridiculous vexations. 
That spirit gave me a habit of viewing 
o 5 



€ 2J4 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

every thing still in the worst light, and of 
finding out matter of vexation to my 
neighbours and myself, where almost any 
other man would have missed it. 1 owe 
most of the miseries I complain of, to thai 
early habit of sarcastic remark and of 
growling complaint, which I affected so 
much when I was at the University. And 
if I have made Sensitive now and then 
more tremulously uneasy, than I could 
have wished; — I have suffered nearly as 
much myself: while, every day, my un- 
lucky discernment becomes more sharp- 
sighted to the detection of evils; and, 
every day, I am touched with the discovery 
in a manner approaching nearer and nearer 
to Sensitive's morbid sensibility. Well 
may my old friend forgive me. On him 
I have long ceased to play by irony or 
mischievous fiction. And, such is the 
force of habit ; and so interesting to me 
are still the tenderness and plaintive gen- 
tleness of his spirit; that I should not, 
now, know how to forego his society and 
converse. 

Sen. Enough! enough! As little should 
I be able to endure, for any length oi 



COMFORTS OF SOCIAL LIFE. glf 

time, the want of your conversation. In 
future,, however, let us be somewhat less 
industrious in using the microscope for 
the discovery of matters of vexation and 
disgust ! 

(C. 8.) 

Merry. These expressions of mutual 
friendship between you, are worthy of 
the ingenuous integrity of your characters. 
Friendship is another of those Comforts 
of Social Life which forbid man to fall 
out with his fellows, on account of any 
petty uneasinesses he may suffer among 
them. However this relation of sentiments 
may arise between any two persons, it can 
subsist only where there is a reciprocal es- 
teem of virtues and abilities, no direct and 
known competition of interests, a mutual 
accommodation of tempers, and some- 
thing congenial in knowledge, habits, and 
pursuits. Where these pre-requisites sub- 
sist between any two persons; and they 
enjoy opportunities sufficiently frequent of 
mutual converse; it is unavoidable, that 
they should be much endeared to one an- 
other. They sympathize more perfectly in 
o 4 



*l6 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE* 

each other's feelings, than it would be pos- 
sible in the relations of slighter acquaint- 
ance. They are united, every day more 
closely, in their interests, tastes, and pur- 
suits. The idea of the one is, to the other, 
associated with almost every object of his 
amusement or regard. They redouble mu- 
tually to one another, for each, his powers 
of activity, of defence, of research, of 
communication, and of virtuous enjoyment 
of almost every species. That appetite for 
society with which the Author of Nature 
has framed us ; and the disposition inhe- 
rent in every one to do to others, all the 
good he can, without a sacrifice of his 
own interests, real or fancied ; evince us 
to have been destined for friendship, as 
one of the highest advantages compatible 
with our condition. But, such would never 
have been our native destination, if it had 
not been in the very nature of the thing, 
that friendship should prove to us, a source 
of peculiar Comforts. We enter, in the 
very dawn of life, into that intimacy of 
connexion with those who are the nearest to 
us, which has a natural tendency to create 



COMFORTS OF SOCIAL LIFE. 217 

in our hearts, the best sentiments of 
friendship. Knowing the proper senti- 
ments of kindness towards a mother, a 
nurse, a father, an infant brother or sister ! 
bow can we, afterwards, avoid dispositions 
of friendship towards every one with whom, 
without having previous cause to dislike 
him, we fall into frequent society ? Young 
persons, at their first entrance into general 
life, are passionately eager to get the friend- 
ship of every one : a plain proof, that 
friendship is to them an eminent source of 
pleasure ! Indeed, society is perfected, and 
the ends of its existence are truely an- 
swered, only, where all the persons in it, 
regard one another with the affections of 
genuine friendship. Pass this da)' in con- 
verse with a stranger, — the next dav, 
ceteris paribus, in the company of a 
friend: — on the third day, you shall be 
easily able to determine, to what a de- 
gree, friendship is one of the most esti- 
mable blessings of human life. 

True it is, that friendship is, in the pre- 
sent imperfection of human nature, seldom 
exemplified in any very near approach to 



218 COMFORTS OF. HUMAN LIFE. 

its genuine purity, constancy, and zeal. 
But, even those imperfect friendships, 
which are common in society, prove the 
sources of most of its Comforts. How 
they animate conversation! How they en- 
lighten, refine, and exalt every species of 
virtuous enjoyment ! How they communi- 
cate from friend to friend, through num- 
bers, joys which, if it were not for the 
sympathies of friendship, might be con- 
fined, respectively, to one or two ! — Take 
mutual hatred and hostility between any two 
persons, as one extreme : let the other ex- 
treme be, between any other two persons, 
the perfection of friendship :— Every ad- 
vance, from the hostile to the friendly ex- 
treme, is not only an increase of Comfort 
to the persons themselves between whom 
it takes place, but an improvement in their 
mutual usefulness to society at large. 

Sen. What, Sir, may be your opinion 
of Female Friendships ? 

Merry. Of friendships between females 
I know, that they are much more frequent, 
pure, and zealous, than it is usual for the 
men to allow of them. 



COMFORTS OF SOCIAL LIFE. Q]Q 

But, I think it the supreme delicacy and 
the perfection of friendship, when, with- 
out any intervention of sensual love, whe- 
ther lawful or licentious, there subsists an 
intimacy of affections, and of congenial 
virtue, taste, and intellect, between a man 
and a woman, persons of good sense and 
moral worth. The difference of sex leaves 
not room for that emulation of character 
and pursuits which can never be wholly 
extinguished between man and man. While 
the mutual intimacy renders them attentive 
to each other's wishes and interests ; the 
sexual difference of character, with the 
differences of education and manners arti- 
ficially superinduced upon that, enable 
them to judge for each other, with a true- 
ness of discernment, which neither could 
so well exercise in his or her own case. 
They anticipate one another's wishes, and 
conciliate one another's humours, with an 
elegant and considerate delicacy, of which 
there is between man and man no example. 
There is something in the native difference 
of character, that the most effectually un- 
locks aman's bosom, and that disposes him 



220 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE, 

to pour out the whole secrets of his soul, 
infinitely rather to an amiable and intelli- 
gent woman, than to any friend, however 
valued, of his own sex. I should suppose, 
that the woman may incline to nearly 
the same preference in frank communica- 
tions, in favour of the man. For myself, 
I will confess my weakness : / can scarce 
ever be Jive minutes in company zoith a wo- 
man, whom I know to be estimable, andzcho 
favours me with her polite attention, zcithout 
feeling disposed to open my heart to her, and 
to ask her advice, with the same ardent im- 
plicit confidence, as if it were my Guardian 
Angel to whom I spoke! The consciousness 

of virtue between the man and the woman. 

• 

in the friendship I speak of, tends to in- 
crease the attachment to the most elevated 
enthusiasm. The different parts which be- 
long to them, in their mutual friendship, 
harmonize much more entirely, than the 
reciprocal good offices in the friendship 
between man and man. The converse of 
the woman gives delicacy of taste, of af- 
fection, of passion, of moral discrimina- 
tion, to the man : it gives purity, facility, 



COMFORTS OF SOCIAL LIFE. 221 

and "elegant lightness of phraseology and 
elocution: it gives that inexpressible, irre- 
sistible" grace of manner, quod nequeo mon- 
strare, et sentio t ant am ! On the other hand, 
the converse of the man communicates to 
the mind of the female, new strength of 
reason, new enlargement of views, a new 
superiority to trivial interests, and to pas- 
sionate disturbance of the heart about ob- 
jects unworthy of its regard, a firmer dis- 
position to sacrifice small present to great 
future interests, boldness, fortitude, and, 
perhaps a more perfect simplicity of man- 
ner. Gibbon is no where in his works, 
more elegantly tender, or more truly inte- 
resting, than, when, in his Memoirs, he 
regrets, that he had not had a sister who 
might have been the domestic friend of 
his life, and mentions the superior perfec- 
tion of a virtuous friendship between two 
persons different in sex, with a preference 
nearly similar to that with which I incline 
to regard it. The value of such a friend- 
ship is eminently illustrated in the account, 
of the correspondence between him, and 
his aunt and mother-in-law, and of the 



222 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

manner in which he lived, when in their 
society. 

I might quote yet another instance of a 
friendship, pure, exalted, and cordial, in 
which the stiength and delicacy of the 
sen iment were eminently displayed. The 
friendship between the late Great Lord 
Viscount N elson, and a Lady whose genius 
and virtues were the pride of the Court of 
Naples, as they are, now, the ornament and 
charm of the society in which she lives in 
this country; I ntean Lady Hamilton, 
Calumny itself has ceased to impeach 
the purity of that distinguished friend- 
ship. Testimony, the best informed and 
the most unexceptionable in integrit}', 
vouches for its sanctity and honour. It 
was animated by a patriotism in which the 
Lady, by her influence at the Court of 
Naples, and by her vigilance for the inter- 
ests of Britain, contributed, in a critical 
moment, and in a manner the most essen- 
tial, to the greatest of the Hero's succes- 
ses. # Its honour, no less than its delicacy, 

* See Mr. Harrison's Life of Lord Nelson. 



COMFORTS OF SOCIAL LIFE. 223 

was attested by the dying remembrances of 
his Lordship towards his inestimable friend, 
and by the nature of the bequests which 
he confided to her tenderness and her vir- 
tue. The justice and truth of an attesta- 
tion so solemn and so high, are confirmed 
by the unambitious elegance of her Lady- 
ship's life in her present retirement, by the 
unaffected delicacy, sanctity and graceful 
propriety of her manners, by that unwea- 
ried and enchanting goodness of heart 
with which she, without one grain of os- 
tention, makes herself so eminently, an 
angel of mercy and sweet benignity to the 
necessitous and deserving ! 

Tes. May Cancer consume the tongue 
that utters a word to the contrary ! — Bat. 
if virtuous friendship between man and 
woman give all these felicities, — what re- 
mains to be derived from Matrimony : 

(C. 9.) 

Chear. Will you hear a batehelor upon 
this topic? or will you not rather declare 
the result of your own experience: We 
know well, that it* has not been unhappy. 



224 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

Tes. Nay ! let us hear a batchelor's 
praise of the Married State? 

Sen. Ay! prithee do, Chearful! My 
feelings will not allow me to speak on the 
subject. I have known what it is to have 
one of the best of wives! and — alas! I 
have known what it is to lose her! 

Chear. In marriage, the characters and 
interests of any two worthy persons whom 
it may unite, are more entirely identified, 
than in the relations of friendship merely. 
Such friendship as has been described, 
may exist between Man and Woman. 
But, it is the peculiar excellence of marri- 
age, that its circumstances tend always to 
create an unity of character and interests 
between tw'o persons, such as cannot take 
place in any of the other relations of life 
— The child is, a while in dependence on 
his parents: but, he is destined to be sepa- 
rated from them even at an early age, to 
fill his mind with associations of ideas dif- 
ferent from theirs, to have other compa- 
nions, to view as it were a new world and 
with "different eyes, to become himself, in 
time, the head of a new family having 



COMFORTS OF SOCIAL LIFE. 225 

new and separate interests. The brothers 
and sisters, children of the same parents, 
have, — in their common relation to those 
parents, in the early society which results 
from that association, in their habitual ac- 
quaintance in early life with the same sub- 
jects of thought and conversation, in their 
being nearly of that equality of age at which 
we are, all, much on a level in the res- 
pects of experience or ignorance, sanguine 
hope, similarity of passions and pursuits, 
and in their having been a while in the 
little domestic circle, almost all the world 
to one another, — have a multiplicity of 
interesting ties to bind them inseparably in 
happy friendship. Nature has even done 
more to make them live in friendship 
together, than it is possible for her to 
accomplish in favour of any whose re- 
lations of consanguinity or affinity are 
reciprocally more remote. Yet, their 
views in life do not proceed within 
the same lines, are not circumscribed 
within the same horizon, do not terminate 
in one point. They are destined to dif- 
ferent functions, different local situations. 
v 



£26 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

separate family-connexions, respectively 
peculiar duties. Their tender affections 
are not to be of necessity concentered 
upon one another. It is in nature, that 
they should be gradually turned away upon 
other objects. It is unavoidable, that the 
fraternal relations, interesting and impor- 
tant as they are, should, by degrees, give 
place, to new relations of love, of friend- 
ship, of conjugal union, and of paternity. 
They mellow, as it were away, — somewhat 
— as the oil or alcohol evaporates from the 
fixing paint which it had served to liquefy, 
—as the butterfly is, in its new existence, 
emancipated from the relations of the 
caterpillar, — as the chemical elements of 
bodies, are gradually attracted out of one 
set of combinations into another. — Not 
such is the natural and necessary course of 
the connexion between husband and wife. 
Even the spell of love is not dissolved by 
their union. If it exist between them, 
with virtue, delicacy, personal cleanliness, 
and good sense, — the charm acquires con- 
tinually new power, — the longer they live 
together, under it. Mutual kindness and 



COMFORTS OF SOCIAL LIFE. 227 

mutual partiality of esteem, are the nectar 
and ambrosia upon which it feeds and 
°tows. Because the vonng and virtuous 
wife knows herself to be dearer and more- 
amiable than all the world besides in her 
husband's eyes, for that very reason he is 
dearer and more estimable than all others 
in the world, to her. These interesting 
prepossessions tend continually to exalt 
and inflame one another. Even the ab- 
sence of those solicitudes which are said 
to be of the essence of love, is not suffici- 
ent, in this case, to abate the passion. 
The habit of affectionate converse, of mu- 
tual sympathy, of unreserved confidence, 
of continually leaning, even in thought, 
the one upon the other, for comfort and 
approbation, enhances mutual endearment, 
more than it is possible for words to ex- 
press. The feeling that they cannot find 
happiness but in an entire unity of affec- 
tions, tastes, and interests, augments the 
same effect. They see nothing around 
them but what is the common work or 
-choice of both. They grow together: and 
their very lives depend the one upon the 
p 2 



228 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

other j — like these of the two persons mon- 
strously united from the birth, in one,— or 
like the Hamadryad and her oak. The 
more important, and the more interesting 
to hope and fear, the objects of their com- 
mon regard ; so much the more is their 
conjugal attachment cemented. Children, 
— the pledges of their married endearments, 
wards committed by Providence, to their 
common tenderness, prudence, and good 
faith, — by engaging them incessantly in 
offices of fond and virtuous attention to 
the same dear objects, still heighten their 
mutual love. As their children grow up, 
leave them, and are dispersed in the world ; 
they find themselves left in a great mea- 
sure, alone; and are again as it were, all 
in all to each other. Afflictions, and in- 
disposition of health, endear them to each 
other's sympathy: Common cares contri- 
bute equally to confirm the constancy and 
fervour of their attachment : and even 
common joys serve rather to promote their 
mutual love, and dependence of mind on 
one another, than to betray them to reci- 
procal indifference. On the last verge of 



COMFORTS OF SOCIAL LJFE^ 229 

existence, they become solicitous each not 
to be left in this world behind the other.— 
Such is the natural effect of the conjugal 
union, where its happy effects are not 
counteracted by 'dees in the parties, such 
as do not necessarily spring from, or ac- 
company marriage. But, even under all 
the disadvantages of the ignorance and 
vices of humanity, I will venture to affirm, 
that, in the married union are to be found 
the truest attachments, the highest and the 
most refined social comforts, of which there 
is any example among men. It cannot 
give to vice and ignorance, all the advan- 
tages of virtue. But, it often, by en- 
lightening ignorance, and by reforming 
vice, raises the person whom they debased, 
to a felicity of which he must, otherwise, 
have remained incapable. 

Merry. Enough, enough of matrimo- 
ny ! But, prithee, Chearful ! let us hear, 
also, your Sentiments of Love r Is not 
love, also, one of the Comforts of Life ? 
Sure, you can tell ! you who, almost ever 
since your days of frocks and petticoat-, 
p 3 



t50 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

have been dying of love for one Princess 
or another ? 

Chear. Nay,, this is too mueh ! Why 
should I engross all the conversation, or 
have it put upon me to make so many of 
the most delicate explanations? 

Tes. Oh ! you shall not deny us, Mr. 
Chearful! You have said so much for 
marriage, of which vou have had no expe- 
rience, that I cannot doubt but you will 
speak handsomely in favour of Love, of 
which I begin to suspect, that you mast 
have had a great deal. 

Chear. A great deal, truly ! Perhaps 
too much ! He who fondly admires the 
felicity of the married state, has known 
much of love, and is, yet unmarried, 
must surelv have been most luckless in his 
courtships ! — 

Sen. On that head you shall not be too 
closely questioned ! But, do, oblige us 
with your sentiments of Love, as one of 
the Comforts or Miseries of Social Life? 



COMFORTS OF SOCIAL LIFE. 231 
(C. 10.) 

Chear. Well, Gentlemen! you will 
have it so : and you shall be obeyed ! — 

I begin with excluding from the cha- 
racter of Love, that mere sensual appetite 
which shuns the alliance of reason or senti- 
ment. It is not Love that fills our houses 
with pollution, and our streets with hag- 
gard and squalid forms, the furies of li- 
centiousness, the ghosts of departed inno- 
cence and beautv. It is not Love that 
engages the silly and the vain, young men 
and young women, mutually to set their caps 
and frizzle their tops, at one another, for 
the sake merely of trying to trepan each 
the other into a passion which neither has 
a soul to feel. It is not love that betrays 
young men and women into one another's 
arms at the command of narrow-minded 
parents, without sufficient previous ac- 
quaintance, without predilection or prefer- 
ence, " loveless, joyless, unendeared." 
Nor shall I allow it to be love that brings 
together gawky boys and girls, at the im- 
pulse of appetite, — under the influence of 
P4 



832 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

capricious levity, — from momentary fond- 
ness for the same follies — but such a pre- 
dilection for trifles and follies, that neither 
will sacrifice the slightest particle of his or 
her partialities to the wishes of the other, — 
and with so very little of true mutual 
affection, that they are, within the first 
fortnight of their cohabitation, reciprocally 
indifferent, — and before the Honey-Moon 
is at an end, sick of one another to loath- 
ing. As little is it to be called Love that: 
brings old maids and batchelors together 
upon views of convenience and selfish 
comfort, which are perpetually disap- 
pointed. It is not Love, but appetite, 
folly, impotence of imagination and de- 
sire, unnatural and contemptible, which 
prompts old men of sixty years to take to 
their arms misses of fifteen, or which 
makes dowagers of seventy to doat upon 
young rakes of five and twenty. 

Yet, in all these cases, there is some 
infusion of the sentiment of Love. And, 
so far as there is any approach to it, — there 
is Comfort, — there is some approach to the 
knowledge of true felicity. 



j Love, the sentiment which is to me, the 
grand charm of social life, derives, uncon- 
sciously, from undepraved sensual feeling, 
that quality by which it is primarily distin- 
guished from the refined, exalted friend- 
ship between Man and Woman, that has 
been alreadv mentioned in our conversa- 
tion. The Taste for the Beautiful, which 
we are, from the earliest infancy, conti- 
nually acquiring by the exercise of our 
judgment, in the discrimination between 
agreeable and more agreeable figures, 
colours, and forms, adds its aid to com- 
pose the charm. The love of the mental 
qualities of virtue, taste, lively genius, 
mild kind affections, delicate propriety 
of sentiment and action, contributes more 
than any admiration of mere personal as- 
pect, to kindle the passion of True Love, 
and to exalt it to enthusiasm and rapture. 
Our respect is- such for the sentiments of 
others, that, to give all its power to ge- 
nuine Love, — it is necessary that the Lover 
should be persuaded, that others view the 
object of his fondness with all his parti- 
ality. — He must, likewise, think it pos- 



234 C0MF0KTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

sible for him to win the favour of the 
woman he loves, or, having already won, 
lo retain it, — but this not without incessant 
care, to attain every merit of manners, 
virtues, talents, and appearance, that can 
adorn him as a man. 

It is not indispensible, that the Lover 
should judge aright, or even nearly right, 
in ascribing all these excellencies to his 
mistress. It is enough, that he actually 
believe her to possess them, — and that, in 
his estimate, just or imaginary, of her 
worth and beauty, there be no qualities 
included, which are not truly and indepen- 
dently elegant and good. It is necessary, 
that the sensual influence should still exist, 
but should operate only by the mystic 
union between soul and body, without 
making itself ever a subject of distinct re- 
flexion in the Lover's mind. It is not ne- 
cessary, that the Lover and his mistress 
should be of the same, or very nearly of 
the same age. It is, perhaps, the most 
favourable to the fervour and the refine- 
ment^ of the passion, that the Lover 



COMFORTS OF SOCIAL LIFE. 235 

should be even more than a very few- 
years older than his mistress. — It is just fit, 
that both should have advanced beyond 
the age of puberty : — that neither should 
have lived to an age at which the health 
and vigour of the frame are in decline ; at 
which tenderness of feeling and vivacity 
of fancy are impaired; at which the Man 
may no longer hope to distinguish himself, 
by those excellencies which are in man 
the most interesting to soft and elegant, 
ami, at the same tinie, to manly and ge- 
nerous society : — that the bloom, the fresh- 
ness, the delicacy of the Lady's personal 
charms, should not yet have begun to dis- 
appear ; and that her timid modesty, her 
sprightly vivacity, her pitying gentleness^ 
her airy gaiety, should still appear in the 
happiest combination with her firmness of 
spirit, and her inflexible propriety of good 
sense. 

Such is that Love which, perhaps, with 
some delusion of fancy. I have learned to 
regard, as the most exalted and the most 
refined of all the Comforts of Human 
Life, It is not so much his mistress, as 



£36 COMFORTS OF HUMAN LIFE. 

virtue and excellence personified, that the 
Lover loves. The very fixing of his heart, 
his fancy, his understanding, upon the 
constant dream of such excellence, keeps 
him in exquisite delight. It tends, irre- 
sistibly to purify his mind from every un- 
worthy sentiment, and to withhold it from 
the power of every polluting, debasing in- 
fluence. Its very solicitudes are charm- 
ing ; since hope soon loses its spring, 
without fear; since fear quickly loses its 
own existence after it has annihilated 
hope; since, in the mutual play of these 
sentiments, the one still prompts to use- 
ful energy, the other still gives a delicious 
foretaste of joy. Nothing gives taste, and 
power of generous exertion, and the di- 
vine felicities of genius^ and the grace and 
the manliness of virtue, like the true Love 
which makes it the Lover's sole ambi- 
tion to win the favour and possession of 
an object, in which he fancies every ex- 
cellence, and which he hopes to obtain 
only by rising to kindred excellence in 
himself. No ! never was any generous or 
truly great act performed ; never was 



COMFORTS OF SOCIAL LIFE. 237 

any thing interestingly amiable exhibited 
among mankind; but through the inspi- 
ration, either of a love of abstract, unper- 
sonified excellence, or the love of a woman 
in whom all excellence was imagined to 
be exemplified. It is this passion that, 
crowned by marriage, gives the golden 
felicity of the married state. — It is this 
passion, that, even, if unfortunate, still 
rewards itself by the noble and virtuous 
sentiments which it has wrought into the 
very texture of the soul ! 

Tes. I must interrupt you. Our con- 
versation has been prolonged beyond the 
convenience of my appointments. 

Sen. I fear we cannot, all, meet for 
some months. To-morrow, I go upon an 
excursion into Wales. 

Merry. Oh ! we have not explained to 
you, a thousandth part of the Comforts 
of Life. How exquisite are the Comforts 
of the Library- — of the Snug Fireside 
of one's HOME— of the Table of Tem- 
perance ! Oh ! it would make your hearts 
warm to rapture, fairly to think of them. 
What Comforts are appropriated to every 
stage in the progress of Human Life — to 



238 comforts of human life. 

Infancy — Youth — Manhood — Green 
Old Age — and even to that last period of 
protracted Life, when it has been fancied, 
that Man must necessarily pass into a 
Struldbrugg ! What Comforts in 
Dullness! How divine the joys of Ge- 
nius ! How genuine, how serene the 
Comforts of Religion ! How does Com- 
fort still break out from the very bosom 
of Misery ! How impossible it is for all 
the Malice of Misery to snatch irretriev- 
ably from Man, one genuine joy! When 
Jove had bestowed on man every blessing 
which Nature presents; and was returning 
to Heaven; — he cast one look back upon 
his new-born favourite. It seemed to his 
tenderness, that something more might yet 
be bestowed. — He gave him, to crown the 
whole, the power of Laughter, and the 
sense of the Ridiculous ! 



the end. 



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